What would The Chief -- the great Arthur J. Rooney -- think if he was alive today and was taken on a tour of the facilities of the football team he founded and ran for so many years?
He'd be astonished at the team's two state-of-the-art facilities: The practice complex on the South Side at the UPMC Sports Performance Complex is the team's main base of operation. Here the Steelers have two practice fields, an indoor complex, a locker room, weight room, training facility, cafeteria and plenty of office space.
On home game days, the Steelers move to Heinz Field, the newly constructed 65,000-seat stadium which offers all the best for fans and players.
The Chief was alive and still running the Steelers in 1970 when the team moved into Three Rivers Stadium, a facility shared with the Pirates. So he had an idea of what was coming. But he also had more vivid recollections of the days when the Steelers bounced from Downtown office to Downtown office and of times when the team wasn't sure where it would be practicing the next day.
From orphan franchise, hoping the Pirates would allow them to practice at Forbes Field, the Steelers have grown into Pittsburgh's No. 1 sports operation. Gone are the days when they'd practice at Moore Field in Brookline or at South Park and played one week at Forbes Field and the next at Pitt Stadium.
The Steelers have come a long way.
Dan Rooney sat in his office at an unfinished Heinz Field and talked about the old days.
"Our first offices were in the Fort Pitt Hotel, which was down near where the Convention Center is today. They were really the offices of the fight game [the Rooney family also promoted boxing in those days]. This is something people can't believe, but in the early days the fight game carried the Steelers. We promoted some big fights.
"In 1946 we moved to the Union Trust Building. Jock Sutherland was our coach then and he said, 'We need our own offices. We can't have this.'
"So we moved. The main office was right on Grant Street. That's where we sold tickets. Jock and the football people were up on the fourth floor. We were there until the mid '50s when we moved to the Roosevelt Hotel. We had an upstairs office and it was half the size of this one and there were four of us, including my father, using it."
On the field, the Steelers had a regular home at Forbes Field from their inception in 1933 until 1958, when they began playing some games at Pitt Stadium. In the early 1960s, the move to Pitt Stadium became full-time and the team remained there until Three Rivers opened.
Leaving Forbes Field meant finding a full-time practice site and that's when the team moved to South Park.
"Our players loved it when we moved to South Park," Rooney said. "They thought it was great. It was a place to call their own."
At last, the Steelers knew where they'd be practicing the next day.
South Park did have some problems. The building the Steelers occupied as their locker room and coaching offices was used as the medical center for the Allegheny County Fair, which was an annual event back then on Labor Day Weekend. That meant the Steelers couldn't move in until after Labor Day. Fortunately, in those days, the NFL season didn't start until later in September.
To remedy this, the Steelers spent a long time in training camp.
"We would go to these training camps, and we went to a lot of them," Rooney said, "and we would make a deal to stay as long as we could. That way, when we got back to Pittsburgh, we could move in to South Park. If we didn't stay long, we'd have trouble finding a place to practice when we got back to Pittsburgh."
Although the Steelers long have been established at St. Vincent College, that wasn't the way in the early days. "We were vagabonds," Rooney said. "We tried a lot of different places. We practiced at Slippery Rock, West Liberty, University of Rhode Island, Alliance College."
It all started to come together when the team moved to Three Rivers Stadium. It had an established home field where it could play and practice and had a regular preseason camp at St. Vincent.
"The players thought moving into Three Rivers was terrific," said Rooney. "I think it had a lot to do with our success. At about the same time we hired Chuck Noll and we started to draft real well. But moving into Three Rivers was a big, big step. It gave the players a sense of home and it gave them a sense of being part of Pittsburgh."
Now after 31 seasons at Three Rivers, the Steelers have a new home.
"It's great for us and it's great for the fans," Rooney said. "Every seat is a good football seat. We wanted to take care of the fans. We wanted to make this a fun place to come. I think they're going to like a lot of the things about it. There's a lot to do here.
"I know what Three Rivers did for us and I would like to see this do the same."
Steelers leave vagabond past behind 
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