Newsday from New York, New York • 23

w' i MM' I I 1 1 i i I iff Phone Items to (212) 303-2850 MANHATTAN CLOSEUP Delmonicos Looks Forward to Gay 90s Newaday John I Delmonicos owner Ed Huber, left, chats with former mananger Harry Poulakakos. did every president from James Monroe to spite of the fact that were in the same business. I By Jessie Mangaliman Delmonicos claim to fame, one hardly anyone would dispute, is that it was the first city restaurant to place menus printed in French on customers tables. Before Delmonicos, New Yorkers ate like pigs, said Joanne OConnor, who serves as the eatery's hostess-manager. OConnor, the restaurants house historian of sorts, does not exaggerate.

Charles Dickens is said to have had the aama low impression of city residents culinary habits but changed his mind after he ate at Delmonicos in 1868. Last week, the restaurant celebrated its 150th anniversary on Beaver Street, the original location. There were other locations 14th Street and Fifth Avenue, 26th Street and Fifth Avenue, and Madison Square that have all closed. But in the heart of Wall Street, in front of a street where a stream filled with beavers used to exist before it was landfilled, Delmonicos still stands, a sesauicentenarian. We joyfully affirm that tradition, said Win Peacock, director of the John Heuss House, a drop-in center for homeless people nearby.

The restaurant began donating food daily to the center, Peacock said. Delmonicos, which has always been a dining scene for politicians and celebrities, had its beginnings in 1827 when brothers Giovanni and Pietro Del-Monico, migrants from Berne, Switzerland, opened a small shop on William Street. Later, they opened the restaurant on 56 Beaver Street, in an odd-shaped building where Beaver, William and South William Streets meet. It was once considered the premier restaurant in America. Such was its stature that in the 1880s, Harper's Weekly called the restaurant an agency of civilization.

But Delmonicos has suffered its share of hard times over the years. It was closed down in 1923 during Prohibition and for 10 years after that, when the building that housed it was used as a shipping office, OConnor said. The restaurant was bought by the Tucci family, which ran it until 1977, when it dosed in the wake of the citys fiscal crisis. When OConnor, a history buff, moved here from Boston in 1979, she found Delmonicos boarded up. I thought, Dam! I missed it.

She had learned about Delmonicos from New York history books and from songs in the Barbra Streisand movies Funny Girl and Hello Dolly. She also knew from her own research that Delmonicos introduced the city to the tomato, once thought a poison fruit, and to the avocado, known as the alligator pear in the 1880s. Baked Alaska was concocted in Delmonicos after the sale of Alaska to the United States, and lobster Newburg was created there, too, named after a customer who suggested the idea. Corrupt Tammany Hall boss William M. Tweed was said to have schemed in one of the private rooms of Delmonicos during the mid 1800s.

President Abraham Lincoln ate at one of the Delmonicos restaurants in Manhattan, and so Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Mark Twain celebrated his 70th birthday in 1905 at the Delmonicos at 14th Street Lillian Russell, Diamond Jim Brady, Horace Greeley, Oscar Wilde and Lilly Langtry all dined at Delmonicos. Richard Nixon used to come here before he became president, said Harry Poulakakos, former manager of Delmonicos on Beaver Street. Thera was a lot of history, a lot of personalities. Poulakakos, who owns Harrys in Hanover Square, started as a bartender at Delmonicos in 1959.

He opened his own restaurant in 1972. I put the best years of ny life here, Poulakakos said, so it was Bad for me to see the place close in 1977. But Poulakakos said he was glad to see Delmonicos reopen and was pleased to join its sesquicentennial party. Italian investors interested in the grand Delmonicos building considered converting the brick and terra cotta structure into a condominium and shops in 1979. My dad had brought me here when I was a boy, said Ed Huber, owner of Delmonicos.

So when I found out about that plan, I got together with my family. He and his family leased the building in 1981. The building was renovated and in 1982, Delmonicos reopened. I told Ed Huber, Heres to another 150 years! Poulakakos said. I wish him the best, in hope he stays around, and I hope I stay around.

If everyone in New York came here at least once, it would stay open, said Cassandra Danz, who is a fan of Mark Twain and Delmonicos and a member of the musical comedy group High-Heeled Women. At last weeks celebration, a representative of American Express said Delmonicos was the first restaurant in America to accept the credit card. In a letter. Mayor Edward I. Koch called it always in the international culinary vanguard.

Whey do I come here? said Justin Murphy, president of Downtown Lower Manhattan Association. I come because its part of New York. I love old New York. Also, two new rooms that used to be part of the restaurants wine cellar were dedicated and named after Dickens and Twain. In the Dickens room there is a framed picture of the author and an envelope that has his signature on it.

The envelope was bought from an autograph collector in Texas. In the Twain room there is a photograph of Mark Twain celebrating his 70th birthday at a Delmonicos dining table. In keeping with the tradition of graciousness and elegance, Huber ushered guests into the new dining rooms while two violinists played Scott Joplins The Entertainer. GREENWICH VILLAGE Sendak Opens Village Writers Series Author and illustrator Maurice Sendak will speak on Writing for Children and Eveiybody Else in the first session of the fifth series of Village Writers Meet their Neighbors at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Hudson Park Library, 66 Leroy St Admission is free.

The series will include discussions by awardwinning dramatist Israel Horovitz, poet Eve Merriam, fiction writers Sandra Scoppettone, Hannah Green, Rosemary Santini and Kathleen Rockwell Lawrence and nonfiction writers Ann Banks, Fred Waitzkin, Joy Gold and Tania Grossinger. Sendak, whose illustrations for the hitherto unknown Grimm fairy tale Dear Mili have won critical acclaim, has written and illustrated a number of childrens books, including Where the Wild Things Are, winner of a Caldecott Medal; In the Night Kitchen; Outside Over There; The Nutshell Library, and Higgiety Pigglety Pop. He has illustrated some 80 books by other writers, and his other awards include the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award and the Hans Christian Anderson Medal. Sendaks first collection of essays, Caldecott Company, was published last October. Sessions are held the second and fourth Thursday of every month and run until 8 p.m.

For additional information, call (212) 243-6876. MIDTOWN Forum on Family And Legal, Social Institutions A forum on the changing nature of the American family and what it means for social and legal institutions will be held Thursday at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, 42 W. 44th St. The forum will begin at 7 p.m. It is sponsored by the bar association, the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund the Bar Association for Human Rights of Greater New York, the Breakfast Forum and the Ad Hoc Committee on Family Diversity.

It will explore how the present legal and social institutions have kept up with the changes in the American family structure. A.