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Food Fit for Kings County: The Culinary History of Brooklyn

Exploring foodways in Brooklyn, historic and contemporary, offers up a unique cross-section of considerations around why we eat what we eat, where it comes from, and what that means. What Brooklyn consumes is defined by its plurality and variety. The borough’s access to waterfront shipping ports and proximity to upstate farmlands adds an additional layer to the near-endless number of restaurants, bodegas, grocery stores, delivery options, food trucks, farm stands, and home-cooked meals we enjoy today. Looking back over Brooklyn's peak industrial period in the 19th and 20th centuries, we can also see how businesses such as sugar refineries, breweries, and poultry farms shaped the social and cultural landscape⁠—and indeed, the landscape itself⁠—of Kings County.

By

Center for Brooklyn History

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Gage and Tollner Restaurant

Gage and Tollner Restaurant

Founded by Charles Gage and Eugene Tollner in 1879, Gage & Tollner was Brooklyn's oldest restaurant until it closed in 2004, and the sole restaurant to receive landmarked status for both its interior and exterior. In fact, it is only the third interior of any kind in New York City to be protected by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, sharing this honor with the New York Public Library and Grant's Tomb. It also had the distinction of being the first restaurant in Brooklyn to hire black servers.

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Gage and Tollner Restaurant

Gage and Tollner Restaurant

It attracted plenty of characters as well, including actress Mae West, author Truman Capote, and early 20th-century financier “Diamond” Jim Brady. When the restaurant closed in 2004, it was briefly turned into a TGI Friday’s, then an Arby’s, and eventually a series of discount clothing stores, but a trio of new owners have plans to revive this legendary Brooklyn institution by the end of 2019.

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Gage and Tollner Restaurant

Gage and Tollner Restaurant

Gage & Tollner was a legend and institution in its time, an "eating house" outfitted in high Victorian mahogany and velvet, serving primarily seafood and chops, including oysters a dozen different ways. Over the years, it catered to a crowd of well-to-do individuals (Veteran server Leon Gaskill is quoted in a 1954 article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle as remembering the names of over 5,000 customers, and referring to most of the men as "Boss, Judge, Chief, Commissioner, or Doctor").

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Rheingold Offices

Rheingold Offices

With Brooklyn’s annexation of Williamsburg and Bushwick in 1855, both thriving communities of German immigrants, Brooklyn became a lager beer hotspot. The area, then known as the Eastern District, had a series of blocks known as Brewer’s Row; 11 blocks, 12 large scale breweries.

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315 Liberty Avenue

315 Liberty Avenue

Brewer’s row was located between Scholes and Meserole Streets and from Bushwick Place to Lorimer Street in the neighborhood of Bushwick. All across Brooklyn, breweries had distinctly German names such as Frese and Urff, Burger and Hower, Edelbrew, Schlitz, Rheingold, Liebmann & Sons, Schaefer, and Piels.

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William Ulmer Brewery

William Ulmer Brewery

In 1907, these breweries collectively produced 2,500,000 barrels of beer, but by the 1980s, the industry had moved to the Midwest, and all of these original breweries had closed.

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7006 3 Avenue

7006 3 Avenue

Founded in 1898, Ebinger's may be famous for its Brooklyn Blackout cake, but it is also known for its exclusionary hiring practices. As a result, it was the site of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)'s protests against racial segregation in 1963.

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129 Montague Street

129 Montague Street

During the early 1960s, the Brooklyn Chapter of CORE was one of the most dynamic civil rights organizations in New York City. From 1960-64, members of Brooklyn CORE led local demonstrations to desegregate businesses and apartments, integrate public schools, create jobs, and improve sanitation service.

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Domino Sugar Refinery

Domino Sugar Refinery

In 1857, Havemeyer, Townsand, and Co. created a refinery on South Third Street in Williamsburg, where undeveloped land, a deep-water harbor, and abundant cheap labor soon attracted other sugar refineries. When it opened, Havemeyer’s refinery had a daily capacity of 300,000 pounds of raw sugar – more than all other New York City refineries combined.

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Domino Sugar Refinery

Domino Sugar Refinery

By the 1870s, the figure was more than 1 million pounds a day, and Havemeyer’s employed 1000 workers for each shift. Located on Kent Ave. between Division and South 11th, the sugar refining industry was the city’s most profitable industry from 1870 through WWI, its true period of decline beginning after the Great Depression

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Domino Sugar Refinery

Domino Sugar Refinery

Domino Sugar is and was the American Sugar Refining Company's flagship trademark. The iconic factory on the Williamsburg waterfront closed in 2004.

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Borden's Plant

Borden's Plant

As New York City grew during the nineteenth century, farmland and cattle became scarce in Manhattan. Dairy farmers moved to Williamsburg, other parts of Brooklyn, and Queens County. By the 1830s, large scale milk and cheese delivery was underway using horse drawn carts.

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Borden's Plant

Borden's Plant

One of the most prominent milk plants in Brooklyn was Borden's, whose iconic Elsie the Cow was a featured star at the 1939 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows Corona Park alongside Electro the Westinghouse Robot. A year later, Elsie was given a husband in Elmer the Bull, the mascot for Elmer's Glue, then the chemical division of the Borden's corporation.

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