Charles H. Taylor, 92; ran Sansom Street gourmet deli

Charles H. Taylor was having lunch at his Center City eatery with actress Julie Harris when a poignant moment intruded.

The pianist on duty realized that Harris had starred in the film East of Eden with the troubled James Dean, who died in 1955, the year the film was released.

"He shifted into the music from East of Eden, and she began to cry," Mr. Taylor told an Inquirer interviewer in 1988, suggesting that Harris was comfortable enough to show emotion with him.

Though a small lunch place, Taylor's Country Store had its fans, even some marquee names.

On Thursday, March 1, Mr. Taylor, 92, co-owner of the store with his wife, Anita, died of heart failure at home in New Hope.

The business was at the northwest corner of 18th and Sansom Streets from 1964 to 1974, daughter Barbara said in a phone interview, and at 1609 Sansom St. from 1975 to 1987.

The Country Store was in the country before it was in the city, Barbara Taylor said.

After her parents were married in 1952, she said, "they started out at the Montgomeryville farmers' market," and though it carried the Country Store name, it was a stand, "a delicatessen. Mostly German imports."

Mr. Taylor's father-in-law traded in wholesale meat, she said, and had set them up in business.

The Taylors operated the Montgomeryville deli for more than two decades, she said, even after they opened their first Sansom Street location.

"For a while, they were running back and forth to both," she said.

Rudolf Serkin, director of the nearby Curtis Institute of Music from 1968 to 1975, was a frequent visitor to the Country Store on Sansom.

And when Citizens for the Arts in Pennsylvania wanted to give a 1983 retirement party for Thomas Schutte, president of the nearby Philadelphia College of Art, it chose the Taylors' store.

But Harris seemed to have a particular affection for the Taylors.

She met them while starring with Richard Kiley in a Forrest Theatre tryout of Voices, which closed on Broadway five days after opening.

Her Philadelphia experience was more pleasant.

In the 1988 interview, Harris recalled that the Taylors "sent this wonderful basket of fruit and cheese and bread to the theater for Richard and me, and I was so impressed I went to the store to thank them.

"And we've been like family ever since."

News stories about the Country Store reported that the unpaid player of the upright piano, on that day and for years, was Arnold Winicov, who performed in order to relax from his work as a lawyer.

In a 1984 appreciation of the Country Store at its second Sansom Street location, an Inquirer food columnist wrote that it was "a nice nook to try."

"If the handful of checkered-clothed tables in the entry alcove is full, there are three floors of casual, bustling eating space to retreat to. (Lunch only, and try to avoid the lunch-hour crowd.)"

City Council had approved licensing of sidewalk dining in 1979, so in a 1987 article about al fresco dining, a Philadelphia Daily News reporter wrote of the Country Store:

"Specialties: gourmet deli. Seating for 16 diners, full menu served at sidewalk seating. Wait during busy times: varies depending on weather."

Born in Pittsburgh, Mr. Taylor graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School there in 1937 and attended Duquesne University from 1938 to 1940.

He enlisted in the Army in 1942, received an honorable medical discharge in 1943 at a base in Arizona, and, in the late 1940s, worked as a stagehand at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio.

After the Taylors sold their Sansom Street business, Barbara Taylor said, "my mother had an antique business up here in Lambertville," from about 1990 to about 2000.

Even there, she said, it was Taylor's Country Store.

In addition to his wife of 59 years and his daughter, Mr. Taylor is survived by sons Andrew and Daniel; daughter Bonnie Taylor; and two grandsons.

A private funeral was held Friday, March 2.

Donations may be sent to the Free Library of New Hope and Solebury, 93 W. Ferry St., New Hope, Pa. 18938.