Old-line private club on a Gold Coast estate; ask about sponsorship on the first call.
The clubhouse is a 70,000-square-foot Georgian house that Howard C. Brokaw finished in 1919, and it has long been known as The Chimneys. Concert Golf says Jane Fonda grew up in it. The golf course arrived 43 years later. Get married here and you are getting married in a real house rather than a hall built to look like one, and the ballroom is the smallest part of the story.
Brokaw ran Brokaw Brothers Clothiers in New York City. His house took five years to build and was done in 1919: 44 rooms, 26 fireplaces, 13 chimneys. The nickname writes itself. Those figures appear both in Concert Golf Partners’ own case study on the club and in Midwest Golfing Magazine’s course profile, and the two agree down to the count of chimneys.
The club’s 2017 recapitalization announcement adds the part people repeat at the bar: the mansion was later Henry Fonda’s home, and Jane Fonda grew up there. The address is 5933 Northern Boulevard, East Norwich.
The land was bought in 1960. Alfred H. Tull laid out the course and it opened in 1962. Robert Trent Jones Sr. reworked it in 1968, and the firm of Finger Dye Spann did more in 1971. Concert Golf lists it at 6,533 yards from the tips.
None of that changes your wedding, except that it does. The course is live on your date. Fairway and cart-path photographs are a scheduling conversation with the golf shop, booked in advance, not something your photographer improvises at 6:15 while the light goes. Ask which holes are available and at what hour.
Straight from the club’s events site: the ballroom is “over 4,000 square feet designed perfectly for a dinner and dancing reception of up to 200 guests.” That is the entire published capacity picture. The Oak Room and the terrace are described as spaces for cocktails and appetizers with no number attached, and the outdoor ceremony goes on the lawn.
The package is all-inclusive and the site lists what sits inside it: “an extensive catering menu, bar service, tables, Chiavari chairs, linens, dinnerware, utensils, and a private space for the bridal party to get ready.” Chairs and linens being inside the number is the detail to hold onto. At a raw-site estate those are two separate rental invoices, and they are not small. No price appears anywhere on either the club site or the events site.
Muttontown’s members approved recapitalizing with Concert Golf Partners by a 96–3 vote, with the board unanimous. The deal completed on 3 October 2017 and was announced on the 16th. Going in, the club carried a 2004 loan of $9.5 million, restructured to a $6.5 million balance in 2014, plus a further $2 million borrowed in 2015, against annual debt service of $850,000. Dues at the time were $25,750 a member.
Afterward, per Concert Golf’s case study, dues came down 10 to 20 percent with a written guarantee of no future member assessments, the median member age dropped by ten years, and 110-plus net new members joined. The 2017 press release describes the same dues cut as 10 to 15 percent and cites nearly $1 million put into capital projects. Both figures are Concert Golf’s own and they do not match each other.
For a couple booking a date, outside ownership is mostly good news. The published improvement list runs to boiler replacement, roof repairs, HVAC, pool deck resurfacing and the parking lot — which is precisely the category of thing that ruins a wedding on the day it finally fails.
The acreage is published two ways by the same owner: 150 acres in the case study, 122 acres in the 2017 announcement. Do not quote either until somebody at the club picks one.
Country Club Magazine dates the club to 1902 and credits Stanford White. Every primary source we found says otherwise: the owner’s case study, the owner’s press release and the course profile all put the course at 1962 and the mansion at Brokaw, 1919. That magazine also publishes an initiation-fee range it openly labels an estimate. Treat both as unusable.
And we cannot verify that a member has to sponsor you. Neither the club site nor its events site says so, and the events site markets weddings to the public with no qualification at all. Ask on the first call instead of assuming it in either direction. If you are shopping this tier, the rest of the field is on our country clubs and Gold Coast pages.
Smithtown golf club that books outside weddings with fairway views.
Commack club with a clubhouse ballroom and no member requirement to book.
Mount Sinai's course-side ballroom looking down the fairways, formerly the Hamlet Willow Creek.
County golf-course mansion in Great River looking over the water.
Marble, chandeliers, and a Great Neck name every Long Island family knows.
All-inclusive Woodbury mainstay with an inn on the property for the out-of-towners.