The Venerable Bridge Cafe Struggles to Reopen After Sandy Even in the calculus of disaster, respect must be paid. If dozens of restaurants and bars have been devastated in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the Bridge Cafe at 279 Water Street in Manhattan is surely one of the most venerable to have been closed by the storm. It dates back to 1794, according to the Encyclopedia of New York City, and is believed to be the oldest continually operating drinking establishment in New York City. The 60-seat restaurant under the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, in a quaint wooden building with tin ceilings, yellow slat walls and a battered oak bar, has been shuttered since it took on nine feet of water in its basement and three feet in its dining room. "We are still hoping to reopen, but my guess now is that it will take three to five months," said Adam Weprin, the restaurant's proprietor. The staff of 22 has been out of work since the hurricane closing. "When I heard it was flooded, I said, this can't be," said Richard McDermott, a professional historical researcher and saloon scholar who was the former publisher of a quarterly, The New York Chronicle, which ceased publication a decade ago. It has always been so durable, that it surprised me no end that it got swamped. Mr. McDermott said the Bridge Cafe "is important to the city because its history is a microcosm of the waterfront, which was a vital part of our economic history," he said. And it was colorful - an infamous den, a terrible dive full of murder and mayhem. Did you know that two murders took place in the building? The damage to the cafe is extensive. "It's the oldest commercial wood-frame building in Manhattan," Mr. Weprin said, and "85 to 95 percent of the wood in the basement needs to be replaced. We lost all our refrigeration units, stoves and ovens. The months-long reconstruction is difficult, he said, "because you open up a wall in a building from 1794, and you discover things." Mr. Weprin added that the reconstruction cost might be $300,000 to $400,000, "and in theory I have insurance coverage, but they are resisting," Mr. Weprin said. Through the centuries the building has been described as everything from a bar to a brothel to a tavern to a restaurant to a pirate dive to a dance hall to a porterhouse, or liquor establishment. It is much older than McSorley's Old Ale House at 15 East Seventh Street in Manhattan, with its sawdust floors and legacy of excluding women until 1970. McSorley's has traced its own lineage back to 1854. Mr. Weprin's father, Jack Weprin, bought the Water Street cafe, in 1979 from the McCormack family, which had operated the restaurant since 1922. Mr. Weprin's mother, Jane, currently owns the restaurant. Mr. Weprin said he will update the restaurant's Web site as soon as a construction schedule can be set. Currently a chalkboard sign at the restaurant, first noted by Eater.com on Monday, tells customers that it may not reopen for several more months. Mr. McDermott, the historian, says he is writing a book on the Bridge Cafe. "I'm hoping," he said, "that this closing will just be a blink in the Bridge Cafe's history."