Frank's Place: The NFL's humble Philadelphia roots

On a chilled Valentine's Day in 1947, Center City Philadelphia's shops and restaurants buzzed with holiday activity. Hardly anyone noticed the small moving truck outside 1518 Walnut St.

The vehicle contained a few desks, chairs, filing cabinets, and boxes that had come from a tiny office over a men's shop at 37th and Woodland. Workers began carrying those items to a three-room suite in the 18-story building, space that until recently had been occupied by a dance studio.

Suite 601 was plenty large enough for its new tenant's staff - if three persons could be considered a staff - and before long someone hung a sign on the door:

"National Football League Headquarters."

Sometimes we become so focused on what is that we forget what was.

Another NFL season began this past week with the hoopla usually reserved for the start of a war. Last year the league reported $7.2 billion in revenue and continued to enhance its reputation as the most powerful and popular sporting force on the globe. Its 32 teams have an average valuation of $1.4 billion. Its championship game has become a national holiday. Its stars are mega-celebrities.

In the face of such overwhelming success, it's nearly impossible to recall that in the prosperous post-World War II years, the NFL was a Philadelphia-based business, though one no more imposing than a shoe store.

From 1946 through 1959, when the league was run by a chain-smoking, chocoholic Philadelphian, its headquarters were here, first above the men's store, then in that abandoned dance studio, and finally in a Bala Cynwyd building that was a short walk from its commissioner's Narberth home.

In 1945, the struggling league had Chicago headquarters. Commissioner Elmer Layden had been one of Notre Dame's legendary Four Horsemen, but he wasn't much of a businessman. When he reacted slowly to competition from the new All-American Football Conference, set to debut in 1946, terrified owners fired him.

They hired DeBenneville "Bert" Bell, who, as his name implied, was a Rittenhouse Square blue blood. Bell had played football at Penn and once owned and coached the Eagles and Steelers.

Deathly afraid of flying, he agreed to take the $20,000-a-year job only if the league's offices could be moved here.

"I don't think the owners were thrilled with the fact that dad wanted to move them to Philadelphia," Jane Upton Bell, the late commissioner's only daughter, told The Inquirer in 1997. "It was just an act of sheer will."

While looking for suitable space, he housed the NFL above a men's shop near Penn's campus. The Walnut Street locale's advantage was that it was close to the Philadelphia Racquet Club, where Bell liked a daily rubdown and steam bath.

With the NFL not yet a round-the-clock, round-the-world enterprise, the activity at the Philadelphia offices typically was relaxed.

Harry Standish, a former New York City police officer and Bell's brother-in-law, compiled statistics. Dan Shea, an aging secretary-treasurer, reviewed ticket receipts. And Joe Labrum, a former Penn football announcer, produced rudimentary news releases.

Smoking, drinking coffee, and often eating chocolate, Bell did most of his work by phone. Sometimes businessmen and league owners visited, and the most important of them were taken to Lew Tendler's, the namesake ex-boxer's South Broad Street restaurant.

"That was one of those old smoke-filled steak places," his daughter said. "Whenever I went there with him, myself and the cashier were the only women in the place."

Some historic business was conducted in the Walnut Street offices. Discussions leading to the 1949 merger that brought the AAFC's Rams, Browns, and Colts into the NFL happened there, as did negotiations for a $75,000 deal with the Dumont Network to televise the league's 1951 title game.

By 1957, the NFL was thriving. With 12 teams, its players' salaries and attendance had doubled under Bell. Oowners signed him to a 12-year extension in 1954. But the commissioner was wearying of the commute from his Narberth home.

"Dad originally wanted to put up a small office building at one end of our property, but Mom said absolutely not," his daughter recalled.

About then, Center City businesses were fleeing to the suburbs. Bell made a deal for a five-room office at 1 Bala Ave. that was, he bragged, six minutes from home.

"City Line was a kind of golden highway then," his daughter said. "WCAU had already moved out there. Blum's and Lord & Taylor had put up new department stores. They were putting up lots of new office buildings . . . and there were restaurants he liked nearby," including the Tavern on Montgomery Avenue and the Chuckwagon.

The NFL moved into second-floor offices there on March 29, 1957. Central Penn Bank occupied the ground floor, and Bell, always looking for convenience, transferred the league's accounts to that institution.

"It was bright and air-conditioned, and all the offices were wood-paneled," Bell's daughter recalled.

Addicted to naps, Bell put a sofa bed in his new office. On one wall, he hung a framed copy of a $1,500-a-game insurance policy he had once purchased on Eagles quarterback Davy O'Brien.

On Oct. 11, 1959, during the fading moments of a Steelers-Eagles game at Franklin Field, Bell suffered a heart attack. Rushed to the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, he was pronounced dead at 4:10 p.m.

In January 1960, Pete Rozelle, the 33-year-old general manager of the Rams, was selected as his replacement. In short order, the growing league's offices were moved to Manhattan.

Today, NFL headquarters occupies four floors and 175,000 square feet of a Park Avenue building. It includes a fitness center, a cafeteria, an employee store, and several themed meeting rooms large enough to accommodate weddings.

No word, though, on whether it's got a steam bath.