Oheka Castle

Otto Kahn spent two years building a hill before he built a house on top of it. That is the correct frame for Oheka: 109,000 square feet, originally 443 acres, formal gardens laid out by the Olmsted Brothers. Today it is a 34-room hotel with three bookable rooms and a Chapter 11 case running underneath it. Both halves of that sentence are true, and you should walk in knowing it.

Kahn built the hill first

Construction ran 1914 to 1919. The architects were Delano and Aldrich; the frame is steel and concrete because Kahn had watched fire take his previous estate, Cedar Court, in 1905, and he wanted this one to be unburnable. The finished house had 127 rooms and sat on what is said to be the highest point on Long Island, on ground that had to be raised first. The grounds carried an eighteen-hole Seth Raynor golf course, greenhouses, an indoor pool and a landing strip. Kahn built out here in part because Jewish financiers were barred from the clubs and golf courses around Morristown, New Jersey. Those details come from the Wikipedia entry, which is the fullest sourced account in one place; the castle’s own site dates its entertaining to 15 June 1920, when Otto’s daughter Maud married and became OHEKA’s first bride.

What happened next is the part people skip. Kahn died in 1934. The estate did time as a retreat for New York City sanitation workers, then housed Eastern Military Academy from 1948 to 1979, then sat empty through more than a hundred documented arson attempts. Gary Melius bought it in 1984, sold it to the Japanese businessman Hideki Yokoi in 1988 for $22.5 million, regained control under a long-term lease after a 1998 lawsuit, and bought the estate outright in 2003. It went on the National Register in 2004. In 2014 a masked gunman shot Melius in the head on the property. He survived. Nobody has been charged.

Three rooms, and only one is the one in your head

The Historic Hotels of America listing for Oheka, which the castle is a member of, breaks the event spaces out by the square foot. The Terrace Room is 5,100 square feet and takes 350 for a banquet or 700 standing. The Grand Ballroom is 2,380 square feet, 200 seated, 450 standing. The Formal Dining Room is 1,590 square feet and seats 100.

Run the arithmetic on the big one and you get roughly 14.6 square feet a head at full capacity. That is tight, and it is almost exactly what Westbury Manor publishes for its Manor Room over on Jericho Turnpike. The castle does not buy you more elbow room than a Nassau catering hall. It buys you the building. Worth knowing before you invite 340 people and picture the Grand Ballroom, which seats fewer than two thirds of that.

The fees they put in writing

Oheka publishes no wedding prices at all, which is normal for this tier. What it does publish, in its wedding FAQ, is a set of terms most venues keep verbal. There is one wedding per day. The 350 figure is specifically tables of twelve with music and dancing. A bridal suite is included the night of the wedding, plus a separate room to get ready in. Cakes from their Classic Elegance Collection are included, with upgrades billed.

Two line items are worth circling. Any vendor not on their approved list has to be pre-approved and carries a $500 approval fee. If your photographer, band, planner and lighting company are all outside vendors, that is a real number, and it is one you can price before the tour rather than discover in a contract. Pets are allowed with a $200 cleaning fee. Candles must be enclosed with drip protection, which quietly rules out a couple of the tablescapes people arrive with.

Chapter 11, in plain English

On 31 July 2025, Kahn Property Owner LLC, the Melius entity that holds the castle, filed for Chapter 11 in federal court, listing roughly $63 million in debt against about $93 million in assets. Foreclosure efforts on the property go back to 2019. Taconic Capital picked up the defaulted note for about $25 million in June 2023; by last year the original $28 million CMBS loan had grown to an estimated $50 million with interest, penalties and fees. A foreclosure auction had been scheduled for 7 August 2025 and the filing stopped it. The Real Deal reported the operating account held $57.27. In December 2025 the neighboring Cold Spring Country Club sold 14 acres to Taconic for $13.3 million, which the Long Island Press covered.

Here is what that does and does not mean for a wedding. Chapter 11 is a reorganization, not a liquidation, and the castle’s public position at the time of filing was that it remains fully operational and that all bookings, hotel stays, events and tours proceed as planned. It is still open, still taking dates, still running tours. Hotels change hands all the time without a single wedding being canceled.

But you are handing a five-figure deposit to a legal entity eighteen months before you use it, and that entity is in front of a bankruptcy judge. So ask, in writing: is the deposit held in escrow or in operating funds, and what happens to your contract if ownership transfers. A venue with nothing to hide will answer that in an email. Note also that the case is still open as of August 2026, with Kahn Property Owner LLC in possession, no trustee appointed and no sale motion filed. A plan and amended disclosure statement went in on 27 July 2026, and three things now land on the same day — 1 September 2026: the confirmation hearing, the US Trustee’s motion to convert the case to Chapter 7 or dismiss it, and the lender’s motion for relief from stay. Case 8:25-bk-72946, Eastern District of New York. If you are reading this after that date, check the docket yourself before you sign.

What to actually ask on the tour

Get the room named in the contract, not just the date. Ask for the approved vendor list before you hire anybody, because that $500 sits behind every name that is not on it. Ask who makes the rain call on a garden ceremony and how many hours before. And ask early about the 34 guestrooms: one wedding a day plus a hotel full of your own guests is the whole appeal, and it is also the thing that sells out first.