The Resurrection of Gage & Tollner
On a Wednesday afternoon in April, I find myself walking up Fulton Mall in Downtown Brooklyn, one of the most rapidly evolving neighborhoods in the borough. I am in search of a very specific building: 372 Fulton Street. Within the first and second floors of the Italianate structure with a neo-Grec storefront lies the newly reopened Gage & Tollner. The restaurant, one of the oldest in Brooklyn, originally opened in 1879 on 302 Fulton St. until it was moved in 1892 to its current location. The end of Gage & Tollner began in 1976 when Fulton Street became a pedestrian mall, as the restaurant could no longer depend on local diners for the largest source of their income. While the restaurant was famous for closing in the summer in its early years, Gage & Tollner permanently shut their doors in 2004 on Valentine’s Day. The top two floors of the building were converted into office space by developer Joseph Jemal, and over the next twelve years, various fast food restaurants and bargain retailers cycled through what was once Brooklyn’s premier restaurant.
In 2016, Jemal announced that he was looking for a restaurant to move into the building. After stumbling onto Gage & Tollner the following year, restaurateurs Ben Schneider and St. John Frizell along with Schneider’s wife, chef Sohui Kim, launched a Wefunder campaign to raise money for the reopening of the iconic restaurant. Through the help of 336 Wefunders and 48 equity investors, Gage & Tollner began renovations in 2019. The reopening of the restaurant, which was set for March 15th, 2020 but postponed due to the pandemic finally took place on April 15th of this year, when Gage & Tollner officially opened its doors for indoor dining at 50% capacity.
Gage & Tollner’s ability to transport guests to another era is seldom found in other New York restaurants due to the classic elements of the menu and interior design that were retained since its inception. Stepping into the restaurant, it is evident that the interior remains almost the same as it was over 125 years ago. With its velvet upholstery, intricate woodwork, and mirrored walls that give it the appearance of a much larger space, it’s no wonder that the Victorian Era dining room was landmarked in addition to the exterior in 1975.
To this day, Gage & Tollner is the only standalone restaurant in NYC history to hold both designations partly due to the most magnificent part of the dining room: the lighting. The 36 gas-lit lamps, including ten ornate brass chandeliers installed in 1888, cast a warm glow over the room when they are lit daily at sundown. In the reconstruction of the interior, Schneider, Frizell, and Kim hoped to re-establish Gage & Tollner as an architectural masterpiece and managed to find and restore all of the iconic chandeliers. Similarly, when designing the new menu they kept certain popular dishes of the original Gage & Tollner, such as the soft-shell clam belly broil, fresh oysters, and mutton chops, while abandoning other dated staples like crab meat Virginia. Of course, Kim and the chef de cuisine, Adam Shepard, also added their own original dishes. For instance, instead of chicken pot pie, a pork pot pie with pâte brisée dough and a light gravy will be served. All 25 cocktails on the downstairs menu are original Gage & Tollner drinks as well, with the exception of the Negroni which was recently added. The upstairs bar, called the Sunken Harbor Club, will serve more modern cocktails.
Gage & Tollner has survived for so long by serving fresh, authentic New York food, maintaining its iconic interior, and treating its employees, many of whom worked for the establishment for decades, with respect and dignity. It is for this reason that the surrounding community will benefit from the reopening of Gage & Tollner. As a resident of Downtown Brooklyn, I have witnessed the neighborhood lose its culture as chain restaurants and stores begin to dominate Fulton Mall and the surrounding area. While we now have more dining options than five years ago due to DeKalb Market Hall, all forty vendors are seemingly semi-permanent pop-ups with larger flagship stores elsewhere in the city. They also offer only to-go meals as Downtown Brooklyn is largely a shopping district that deals with a constant influx of external consumers. Because of this, a high quality sit-down restaurant will greatly benefit the residents of the community as it will be one of the only ones we have. A New York institution, Gage & Tollner will help transition Downtown Brooklyn towards having more permanent, local establishments for the enjoyment of the neighborhood.