Gage & Tollner
372 Fulton Street | also 374 Fulton Street | Downtown Brooklyn | built 1875
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1889
Gage & Tollner's moves to 372-374 Fulton Street, a building put up as a private home
The structure at 372-374 Fulton Street dates to the mid-1870s, most likely 1875, when it was put up as a private residence, and the Craft family owned it for fifty years. The restaurant, started by Charles Gage in 1879 at 302 Fulton Street, moved here on February 18, 1889. Judges, politicians and department-store executives soon favored it, and it became known for oysters and clam bellies.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1910
Gage and Tollner step back after thirty years, but Tollner keeps working
Charles Gage and Eugene Tollner gave up management at the end of 1910 and sold to A.H. Cunningham and Alexander Ingalls, on condition that the name and interior stay as they were. Gage retired, while Tollner stayed on at the restaurant until his death in 1935. Co-owner Marcus J. Ingalls died of a heart attack at the restaurant in February 1911.
“Tollner and Gage decided to relinquish management of the restaurant on December 31, 1910, as both men had been operating the restaurant for 30 years.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1919
The Dewey family takes over and runs the restaurant for nearly seven decades
In May 1919 the wine merchant Hiram Stapleford Dewey acquired a controlling interest and installed his son Seth Bradford Dewey as head of the restaurant, promising to keep the name and standards. Seth later talked Tollner into staying as general manager. During Prohibition the restaurant was the only chop house in the city to stay open, and the Deweys' Dewham Company bought the building in March 1923.
“In May 1919, wine merchant Hiram Stapleford Dewey bought a controlling stake in Gage & Tollner's and formed a new corporation to take over the restaurant.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1974
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates Gage & Tollner, a late Italianate building with an 1890s interior
The city's report describes a four-story building from the mid-1870s in late Italianate style, with an unusually high painted wooden storefront in neo-Grec style probably added around the time the restaurant took the space. Through the front window it notes mahogany furnishings, mirrored and velvet walls and cut-glass chandeliers. The commission designated the building as a landmark in November 1974.
“The four-story building which houses the restaurant dates from the mid-1870s and is basically late Italianate in design.”
- 1988
Chef Edna Lewis brings Southern cooking to the dining room
A partnership led by Peter Aschkenasy bought the restaurant in November 1988, after its business had fallen by more than half between 1981 and 1988. He hired the chef Edna Lewis, who added Southern dishes such as cornbread, catfish and she-crab soup. The Times credited her hiring with reviving the place, and the Brooklyn Eagle later noted that Black customers had once been refused service here. Lewis retired in 1992.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2010
An Arby's opens inside the landmarked dining room and closes that August
After the restaurant closed on February 14, 2004, a T.G.I. Friday's took the space that September and shut in 2007, and a Harlem soul food restaurant was evicted in 2008. An Arby's franchise then won approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission and opened in January 2010. It closed that August.
“The Arby's franchise opened in January 2010 but lasted only until that August.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2021
After a crowdfunded revival, Gage and Tollner reopens for dine-in service
The restaurateurs St. John Frizell, Sohui Kim and Ben Schneider launched a crowdfunding campaign in July 2018 and signed the lease in January 2019. The planned March 2020 reopening was postponed by the pandemic, and delivery and take-out began in February 2021. Dine-in service resumed on April 15, 2021, and the second floor became the Sunken Harbor Club that November.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Gage and TollnerWikipedia
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