THE HUNDRED CLUB.(oldest businesses in New York, NY)

Fanelli's Cafe, at the southwest corner of Prince and Mercer Streets, is probably the second- or third- or fourth- oldest drinking-and-eating establishment in New York. It opened for business in eighteen-something-or-other-- with a different name (or, more likely, with no name at all), and in a somewhat different form--and has been providing Manhattanites with alcohol and food in varying ratios ever since. It acquired its current name from Michael Fanelli, a retired boxer, who ran the place from the early nineteen-twenties until the early nineteen-eighties. A cupboard behind the bar leads to a secret room, where Fanelli, during Prohibition, stashed illegal booze, some of which had been distilled on the premises. If you ask to see the secret room today, the current owner, whose name is Noe, will say no.

A darkly inviting painting of the exterior of Fanelli's is reproduced in miniature on the cover of "The Historic Shops & Restaurants of New York: A Guide to Century-Old Establishments in the City," a new book by Ellen Williams and Steve Radlauer. The book is filled with the sorts of facts that make New York such a challenging city to take for granted: the salesmen at Brooks Brothers addressed J. P. Morgan throughout his life as Jack; Salvador Dali bought leeches (for use as models) at J. Leon Lascoff & Son Apothecary, on Lexington Avenue, which has been open since 1899; Jay Vanderbilt, Joseph Pulitzer, Helen Keller, and Sammy Davis, Jr., all shopped at Mager & Gougelman, on East Thirty-seventh, for artificial eyes.

One recent Monday evening, representatives of some forty century-old establishments gathered at Fanelli's to celebrate the book's publication. Most of the guests wore nametags, and many sipped historically appropriate cocktails, called gin daisies. Herbert Weitz, a secondgeneration rare-book dealer and bookbinder, invited the other guests to autograph their entries in his copy of the book, and served as an unofficial facilitator and matchmaker. "Hey, Floor Coverings!" he hollered at one point, to two sisters who run a hundred-and-thirty-five-year-old flooring business called Aronson's. "Have you met Wholesale Marble?"

Many of the city's oldest businesses were founded by Italians or Eastern European Jews who arrived here shortly before the turn of the twentieth century; subsisted at first by peddling merchandise from pushcarts or horse-drawn wagons; eventually saved enough money to acquire storefronts; and passed their growing businesses to their children. "It's always the same story," Mark Federman, the third-generation proprietor of Russ & Daughters, a fish specialty store on Houston Street, said. "The only difference is that the Italians ...