After a half a million dollar facelift, the historic restaurant Gage and Tollner is about to be reborn. It will open once again as an oyster and chop house and serve dishes similar to the items on its menu more than a century ago.

"We have menus going back to 1919 and really the menu was pretty much the same throughout the life of the restaurant. So we really wanted to bring back some of the things that people really like that they had here,” says restaurant partner St. John Frizell.

The furniture and floor are new, but much of the interior looks the same as it did when the restaurant first opened in 1879. The gas light fixtures have been polished, the oversized cherry wood trimmed mirrors shined and the skillfully crafted woodwork oiled. For decades, patrons from Mae West to Al Capone to judges from nearby courthouses and residents from across the borough dined here. But the restaurant fell on hard times, going bankrupt in 1995. It closed nine years later.

"We've been getting emails and phone calls for a month of people that are really ready to come back. Because most of the calls are from people who have memories of dining here in the past. And often very strong memories. They ate here with their parents or grandparents. They celebrated their wedding or anniversary here,” says Frizell.

St. John Frizell, who owns Fort Defiance restaurant in Red Hook, partnered with the husband and wife owners of The Good Fork in Red Hook to reopen Gage and Tollner. They created an online fundraising campaign, and attracted more than three hundred investors. A state of the art kitchen was installed and staff hired, including a pastry chef who says there will be plenty of delectable desserts.

"There's Baked Alaska, souffle, sundae, classic baba au rhum that is flambéed, which is really fun as a chef,” says pastry chef Caroline Schiff.

Initially, the restaurant will only serve dinner, but there are plans to expand the offerings and the space to include a cocktail bar and private dining room on the upper floors. There's also an effort to put together an oral history project with testimonials from former customers, as a way to highlight the past while ushering in a new era.

Gage and Tollner opens to the public on March 15th.