Chateau at Coindre Hall — Attraction in Town of Huntington

The Coindre Hall, also known as the George McKesson Brown Estate is a beautifully designed Renaissance & medieval French chateau style mansion located in Huntington, New York. It overlooks Huntington Harbor, near the Long Island Sound. Designed by architect, Clarence Summer, the mansion has 40 rooms, is 80,000 square feet and was fully built in 1912. It first served as the residence for George McKesson Brown, a Huntington Fire Commissioner and member of the prominent and wealthy McKesson family. The McKesson family, specifically John McKesson were involved in founding the McKesson Corporation, a highly successful pharmaceutical and health information technology firm. Around 1939, the estate was acquired by the Brothers Of The Sacred Heart, a Catholic order, and they used the property as a boarding school and summer retreat. The Brothers Of Sacred Heart named the property Coindre Hall to honor Father Andre Coindre, the founder of the order. Due to a limited supply of teachers, the Brothers decided to close the school in June of 1971. Today, Coindre Hall is owned by Suffolk County through the Suffolk County Department of Parks, Recreation & Conservation. They’ve owned the property since 1971 and it’s major occupants are Lessings Caterers, whom host, plan and prepare weddings and other catered events, and the Splashes Of Hope, a nonprofit organization dedicated on creating art for public spaces for the purpose of healing and enriching environments. The Splashes Of Hope also conducts complimentary guided tours of Coindre Hall and the tours take place on the last Saturday of each month, typically around 11:00am. Due to its rich and storied history and groundbreaking architectural elements, Coindre Hall is listed on the National Register Of Historic Places. In October of 2025, my wife and I had the pleasure of taking part in a guided tour of Coindre Hall and we very much enjoyed our tour experience!!! Our tour guide, Donna did an amazing job on explaining the development and rich history of the estate, and also discussed the lives and workings of the occupants that lived at the mansion. During our tour, Donna also took time to showcase the distinct Renaissance and French architectural features that are encompassed in the mansion’s exterior facade. Our favorite parts of the tour were exploring the well preserved and picturesque landscape surrounding the mansion, enjoying the awesome views of the beautiful Huntington Harbor and Long Island Sound, and also seeing the amenities in the mansion that date back to the early 1900’s such as the spiral staircase and the beautiful ceiling lamps. We also enjoyed viewing and taking pictures of the various Halloween theme decorations that were installed by a local community organization, and also seeing the gorgeous works of art developed by the Splashes of Hope. Both my wife I thank Donna & the Splashes Of Hope for providing a wonderful guided tour of Coindre Hall and definitely recommend for everyone to visit this outstanding historic...

Where do we start? From the moment we set foot in the foyer, we knew Coindre Hall was IT. Yes, it’s a Lessing’s venue, aka a very well-known hospitality group across the Island. And, yes, we ended up selecting their “all-inclusive” wedding package, but our experience was far from “cookie cutter.” From the moment we walked in, John greeted us with a smile and enthusiasm, and his attention to detail and his knowledge of the property and how to run our event from top to bottom are unmatched.

First, we loved that we got to get married in such a beautiful, romantic, historic waterfront venue – Coindre Hall truly is a hidden gem and I’m so surprised people don’t know about it or haven’t been to more events here. The venue also offers you the opportunity to have your ceremony and reception on premises, indoors or outdoors, and only hosts one event at a time, so you will never be short-changed when it comes to service and attention.

Second, we know some people don’t love that the venue is broken up into several different spaces, particularly the dance floor being in a separate room from the dining tables, but boy did this work out LIKE A DREAM! We could dance our hearts out AND hear our guests and ourselves when we talked. It was so nice to take a breather from dancing with some peace and quiet. Yet, you could still hear any and every announcement our MC made all night long.

Finally, the food and service were truly outstanding! The food preparation is done/overseen by the same chef as the Three Village Inn (hint: if you want to do a “tasting,” go have lunch or a date night there!) and WOW! Everything was DELICIOUS! We served a wide variety of dishes between cocktail hour and the reception and everything was so flavorful and prepared to perfection. The real stars here were John and the Coindre Hall staff! Even two weeks later, we have people telling, texting, and posting about how much fun they had and telling us it was the best wedding they’ve ever been to. We are thrilled with the choice we made with...

I went here on a wedding tour here and I have to say, at first the place seemed beautiful the foyer and the front of the venue was amazing and was exactly mine and my fiancés style. Once we proceeded to the area where the ballroom and the dinning room were it seemed to change and look very crammed and tight. It gave us a forced vibe, seemed like they were just trying to cram everything into the 2 areas in order to make it work. There was no natural flow to the element of how the wedding would’ve taken place. As the tour was coming to an end and we went into the office to speak about the menu and pricing we sat with Jerry. (Who was the same person that gave us the tour of the venue) we went over some of the food options and someone with no appointment walked into the venue and jerry said to us. “Give me a few minutes they are just curious about the house but I’m not pitching anything to them”. He handed us books of photos to look through as he proceeded to leave us sitting at his desk in the middle of the planning to go and tour the people that just walked in ! And we heard him complete the same tour he did with us as we remained sitting there for a few minutes we felt it was so disrespectful to leave your appointment sitting waiting for you to help the people that just walked in with no appointment as we were in the middle of discussing everything! We were shocked. It was such a terrible display of hospitality, especially when we’re potentially going to spend 10s of thousands of dollars and book our most important day at your venue. It gave us the impression that we just weren’t important. My fiancé and I are both in the hospitality industry and this was the worst display of hospitality and service I almost found it comical. We decided to leave before he even got back because there was just no point in finishing...