This is a rewrite as wordpress got the hiccups when I was in the middle of writing before.

Bill Henley, one of the NBC10 tv guys, was in a community service ad this morning and mentioned the Crystal Tea Room. When we were little kids, especially around Christmastime, mom and my grandmom would take us first to John Wanamakers. This was a top notch store in downtown Philadelphia. We first had to drive down to 69th St and then take the el train which was fun and scary at the same time. When we reached our destination, we usually caught the light show on the main floor. Then we headed up to the 9th floor where the Crystal Tea room was (mom updated me with this info). It was so elegant and beautifully decorated. We usually had tea sandwiches (which I still love) which consisted of chicken salad, tuna, deviled ham or cucumbers. And I believe we had soup too. The menu was quite brief, one side of a menu. For dessert, we had a snowball with the fake holly leaf to adorn the top. We thought we were special. The snowball was vanilla ice cream rolled in coconut. The store was smart to have the art supply/toy area near the restaurant as we always got a drawing tablet and one of those fat ink pens that held about 10 multi-color inks.

Here is what the tea room looks like today, very much like what I remember: