Downtown

Could a restaurant be coming to the Gage & Tollner building?

Eye on Real Estate

February 22, 2017 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Gone but not forgotten: Here's beloved Downtown Brooklyn restaurant Gage & Tollner in an undated photo. Photo courtesy of the Edward Dewey estate
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Could it be?

Will a restaurant return to the romantic, landmarked (both inside and out) Downtown Brooklyn venue where dinner was served by the glow of gaslight chandeliers for more than a century?

The space for rent in a brownstone at 372-374 Fulton St. is where much-missed Gage & Tollner was located from 1892 until its 2004 closing.

“We are getting queries from many restaurants,” William Jemal, a member of the family who owns the historic building, said via email.

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It is possible some other type of tenant will wind up winning the space.

“We would prefer a restaurateur but certainly will consider a creative retailer,” he said.

“There is a lot of interest” in the space, he said.

Gage & Tollner’s old-fashioned style was the stuff of legend. There were waiters in jackets and bow ties and oysters served an astonishing number of ways. The interior design was pure 1890s, which is one of the reasons the interior was landmarked.

“Upon entering, one is immediately transported back to the period of Diamond Jim Brady,” the city Landmarks Preservation Commission’s 1975 designation report about Gage & Tollner’s dining room said.  

Over the years, patrons included Mae West and Jimmy Durante.

“The Gage & Tollner building is one of New York’s great historic landmarks, the city’s first landmarked dining room and one of the few restaurants in the city so honored, such as the Rainbow Room and the Four Seasons,” Jemal said.

“We respect the interior and exterior landmarking of the building and look forward to working with a restaurateur or other retailer that uses the unique building attributes to enhance the business while preserving Brooklyn’s glorious past.

“As Downtown Brooklyn continues to flourish, we believe strongly in the vitality and resurgence of the Fulton Street retail corridor,” he added.

According to city Finance Department records, an LLC with a managing member whose president is Samuel Jemal purchased the Gage & Tollner building for $2.8 million in 2004.

A marketing flier on a Jemal family company’s website says the asking rent for the ground floor is $125 per square foot. There’s 3,200 square feet of ground-floor space and 3,000 square feet of second-floor space.

Nostalgia on Fulton Street

The most recent tenant, which sold discount jewelry and apparel, left the premises several weeks ago. The City Marshal’s eviction notice is still taped to a window.

After the retailer departed, the building owner tidied up the interior.

Temporary paneling that had hidden landmarked mirrors, cherry-wood arches and cut-velvet and Lincrusta-Walton wall coverings has been removed. So has merchandise that made it hard to see the historic wood bar.

By the way, when saw the expression “Lincrusta-Walton” in the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s designation report about Gage & Tollner, we looked it up. Lincrusta is an embossed, washable wall covering invented in 1877 by Frederick Walton, who had been a developer of linoleum floor coverings in the 1860s. Lincrusta was popular in the Victorian era as a substitute for artisan plasterwork.

The Jemal family graciously said yes to our request to visit the Gage & Tollner space.

It was such a nostalgia-inducing experience. When we walked beneath the row of combination gas-and-electric chandeliers, we could remember dining there decades ago, when the late Ed Dewey owned the restaurant.

 


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