Where: May Company department store
Why: In 1936 the team’s owners gathered here for lunch every Monday after a game to tote up team expenses and chip in cash to keep the team afloat
Now: Located at 105 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland. The building currently is unoccupied except for some retail at street level (the store closed in 1993) but is scheduled to be converted to apartments
What: In the summer of 1936 the Rams franchise was set to begin play in the American Football League—coincidentally just as the Republican National Convention was held in the city. One of the team’s founding owners was Robert H. Gries, operating manager of the May Company and later a founder of the Cleveland Browns with Arthur “Mickey” McBride. Every Monday after each game, Gries hosted the other owners for lunch, at which they would add up on a paper napkin all of the week’s expenses, reach in their pockets, and pool their money. “I mean, it was very primitive,” said Gries’s son Robert D. Gries, long-time minority owner of the Cleveland Browns, but it pulled the franchise through its all-important first year in the post-Depression era.
THE CLEVELAND RAMS 