New Sign Will Commemorate Pottstown Firebirds

Unless you are a football history enthusiast, you could drive right through the middle of downtown Pottstown and never know it was once home to a successful professional football team.

Well it looks like that is about to change.

Wednesday night, borough council reviewed two possible locations for downtown signs commemorating the Firebirds.

The favored location seems to be on the south side of High Street, between Smith Family Plaza and 152 High St., home of the Blue Elephant restaurant as well as the Tri-County chamber of Commerce and the Pottstown Area Health and Wellness Foundation.

The other possibility is along the east side of South Hanover Street, just south of the intersection with High Street, where those waiting in traffic for the long light there might have time to read the sign.

According to the sign, the Firebirds, who were in town from 1968 to 1970 and were a farm team for the Philadelphia Eagles, won two Atlantic Coast Football League championships.

The Firebirds played in Grigg Memorial Stadium, located at the Pottstown High School/Middle School campus.

And if you want to know more than the sign tells you, well NFL Films made two films about The Firebirds, one of which is embedded at the top of this page and the other at the bottom.

This is the 50th anniversary of the Firebirds time in Pottstown and Mercury sports veteran wrote an article last month profiling former Firebird Jack Dolbin. You can read it by clicking here.

On Monday, he wrote another, this time profiling John "Bull" Barber. You can read it by clicking here.