Recently, I headed back to Long Island to the shore of the Huntington Harbor to visit a 40 room, 30,000-square-foot medieval French château with cone-shaped roofs built for pharmaceutical magnate George McKesson Brown in 1912. "Founded as Olcott & McKesson by Charles Olcott and John McKesson in New York City in 1833, the business began as an importer and wholesaler of botanical drugs. In 1853, the name was changed following the death of Olcott and the joining of a new partner, , Daniel Robbins. Today the company is one of the largest in the United States and is a leader in pharmaceutical distribution and healthcare IT. McKesson's descendants also hold a large portion of shares in the company." Wikipedia Designed by architect Clarence Luce, the estate was originally called West Neck Farms, and was modeled after a chateau in the south of France. The French Chateau style is a mix of late French Gothic and Renaissance Revival style design elements, which was popular in the early twentieth century. Despite having the title as one of the original Gold Coast Mansions with extensive land at 33 acres today, Coindre Hall once boasted fifty-four acres. Brown used it as his summer home for him and his wife Pearl. The estate would operate year round as a farm. During World War 1, the estate became Brown’s year-round home. With the stock market crash and the Great Depression, Brown lost ownership after his finances began to suffer. The home was put on the market and the Brown’s moved into the Gate House which still exists today and is located next door . The Brothers of the Sacred Heart purchased the estate and renamed it Coindre Hall, in honor of the founder, André Coindre, and operated the property as a boarding school. Father André Coindre was born February 26, 1787 in Lyon, France and died May 30, 1826 in Blois, France. Father André Coindre was founder of the Fratres a Sacratissimo Corde Iesu (Brothers of the Sacred Heart), a Roman Catholic religious order primarily devoted to high school and elementary school education; the brotherhood is also a missionary society. The Brothers of the Sacred Heart named a boarding school Coindre Hall in honor of the order's founder. The school operated in Huntington, New York from 1939 to 1971. he was the founder of the Brothers of The Sacred Heart, who re-founded St Columba's College in St Albans Citing bankruptcy, the school closed in 1971. The estate sat abandoned for a decade, before given life again with the signing of a lease to the Eagle Hill School, which was a private coeducational boarding school for students with learning disabilities from 1982-1990. By 1991, the Alliance for the Preservation of Coindre Hall Park was organized to preserve, protect and restore this property. In 1995, the mansion was officially designated “The Museum of Long Island’s Gold Coast”. Today the estate offers tours and is one of only estates in the Gold Coast area that still has a large amount of acreage.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORLaura Gonzalez is a photographer, blogger and historian currently residing in Newark, New Jersey. Archives
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