Tea Room Postcard #49 -- Strawbridge & Clothier (Philadelphia, Pa.)

It was while I was writing a book about department store tea rooms in 2011 that I first learned about the Strawbridge & Clothier department store in Philadelphia, Pa. I later acquired a teacup and a soup bowl from the old store, which was in business from 1868 to 2006 in the northeastern U.S., with headquarters in Philadelphia. That's the site of this vintage department store tea room postcard that I was happy to add to my collection.

The card is postally unused, but I liked it anyway because of not only the image of the tea room but also the old-timey telephone pictured on the back. When I was a little girl (which means the late sixties and early seventies), my mom was into the whole Early American decorating theme, and I remember having a wooden box telephone with a receiver that looked like the ones pictured here. In my lifetime I've seen a lot of changes in telephone equipment, including the switch from rotary phones to push-button phones (so exotic!), Princess phones, cordless phones, the first clunky "car phones," clamshell phones and now smartphones. I couldn't help chuckling the other day when I read a post on Facebook where some young mom was lamenting the misplacement of her cell phone and said, "Somebody ought to make one of these with a cord on it that you can hang on the wall." I think it was a joke, but I wouldn't bet on it!