Coindre Hall

George McKesson Brown owned the McKesson Chemical Company of Connecticut and was active in Huntington civic life. A history sheet issued by Lessing's, the caterer at the house, says the estate began as West Neck Farm, assembled between 1906 and 1912 as a country home for Brown and his wife, Pearl, and that they became year-round residents during the First World War. The same sheet describes a self-contained manor of about 135 acres between Huntington Harbor and Southdown Road, with a farmhouse, garages, a gate house, a boathouse, a water tower, and an ice house, all linked by telephone. The National Register form instead describes a 54-acre parcel facing the harbor.

According to the National Register form, Brown commissioned the architect Clarence Luce in 1910, with J. V. Schafer as contractor. Luce had practiced in Boston and New York and was one of the architects of the King Model Houses in 1891. The Suffolk County parks page gives 1912 as the year the house was built. The house is a two-and-a-half-story stucco building with a red clay tile roof, round towers with conical roofs, tall brick chimneys, steep gables, and carved fish gargoyles. It was built in a U shape around a small courtyard that opened onto a covered piazza facing the water. Inside were a cloister, library, billiard room, servants' hall, and an indoor pool. The basement held a ceiling tramway for coal and ashes and a ventilation system that cooled air over ice. A 1910 boathouse with a four-story octagonal tower and a 1910 garage survive.

The caterer's sheet says that by 1932 taxes had reduced Brown's wealth and he began selling parts of the estate. In 1939 the Browns moved into the gate house, now a Unitarian church, and sold the main house with 34 acres to the Brothers of the Sacred Heart. The Brothers named it Coindre Hall after the founder of their order and opened a boarding school for boys. In the 1940s the school enclosed the piazza and extended the rear wings, and an auditorium wing was added in 1965. The school operated for about 30 years, and two later schools each failed after short stays. Suffolk County acquired the property in 1972 according to the caterer's sheet, or 1973 according to the county.

The estate was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985; the county's page gives 1989. The county describes an 80,000-square-foot mansion in a 33-acre park, while the 1985 nomination counted 13 acres. The grounds run down to Huntington Harbor and are open as a park. Weddings and events are booked through Lessing's, and the nonprofit Splashes of Hope gives free public tours on the last Saturday of each month at 11 a.m.