The Milleridge Inn Fire Split One Jericho Landmark Into Four Different Timelines

At 9:30 on the night of August 20, the first call came into the Jericho Fire Department for an active fire at 585 North Broadway. Within minutes, engines from Westbury, Syosset, Bethpage, Hicksville, Carle Place, Glenwood, Roslyn, Plainview and Farmingdale were rolling toward the same address under mutual aid, a nine-department response for a building that has stood on that corner since before the United States existed. No one was hurt. The building did not fall. But as of mid-September, the question Jericho residents are still asking each other at the bakery counter or over the fence isn't whether the Milleridge Inn caught fire. Everyone already knows that. The question is what "Milleridge Inn" actually means, because it turns out to be more than one place, and the fire didn't touch all of them the same way.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. If you had a wedding booked at the Cottage this fall, or you were planning to bring the kids to the Halloween Village in October the way your family has for years, the answer to "is Milleridge open" isn't yes or no. It depends on which Milleridge you mean.

One Address, Several Businesses Under It

The property at 585 North Broadway isn't a single restaurant with a parking lot. It's a cluster of separately operated spaces that share a name, a driveway, and an owner: the main Inn dining room, the Cottage banquet hall used for weddings and corporate events, and Milleridge Village, a walkable row of small shops that includes a bakery, a general store, a candy shop, and the Carriage House Wine Bar. Fire officials confirmed that most of the structural damage from the August 20 fire was contained to the second floor, the attic, and the exterior of the original Inn building, with the ground-floor bar, an office above it, and an adjoining dining area taking the worst of it.

The Village and the Cottage sit close enough to smell smoke that night but far enough to be structurally separate. In the days right after the fire, reporting from Long Island Press described an early walkthrough that found no visible damage to the Carriage House or the Cottage. For about a week, the working assumption around town was that the Village had been spared entirely.

That assumption didn't hold for the whole property. By August 28, Patch reported that the Cottage had also been closed until further notice, a reversal from the initial read on the damage. The Dover Group, which owns the Milleridge Inn along with the Coral House banquet venue in Baldwin, confirmed the change. So the honest answer, as of the most recent public reporting, breaks down like this:

No source has published a reopening date for any of these pieces. Owner Butch Yamali told reporters he intends to work with the Town of Oyster Bay to get the Inn open again as quickly as possible, but a 350-year-old building doesn't rebuild on a fast-food timeline, and nobody involved has pretended otherwise.

Why A Building That Old Burns The Way It Did

Nassau County Chief Fire Marshal Michael Uttaro, who investigated the cause, described it as an accidental electrical fire that started in a box on the building's exterior. The age of the structure played its own role in how quickly it spread. Uttaro noted the building's cedar shake exterior, the kind of material that catches fast once it starts, and pointed out that a soaking rain that night likely slowed things down rather than making them worse.

"It's a very old building, and that cedar shake usually goes up like kindling, so thankfully, it got a good soaking from the rain, which probably limited the quick spread of the fire."

Firefighters had to open walls and ceilings on the second floor to check for fire hiding in the voids between them, standard practice in a building with more than three centuries of additions, repairs, and renovations layered on top of each other. The Inn's documented history traces back to 1672, when Mary Willets, a Quaker settler, built a two-room house with a single fireplace on the site. Property records and local histories put parts of the land's use even earlier, to 1653. Long before it was a place for Sunday brunch, it was somebody's home.

What This Means For Halloween And The Holidays

Every October, Milleridge Village runs its seasonal draw: a pumpkin patch, a haunted house, a kids' train ride, and appearances from Gregg the Woodcarver, a fixture of the Village square for years. The holiday season that follows brings live carolers and the kind of decorated storefronts that make the Village a stop on more than a few Jericho families' December routines, separate from whatever is happening at the main restaurant.

None of the reporting on the fire addresses whether this year's Halloween and holiday programming will run as scheduled. The Village buildings were reported undamaged, which is a reason for cautious optimism, but the Cottage closure that followed the initial all-clear is a reminder that early damage assessments on a property this old and this interconnected can change. Families who plan around these traditions each year would do well to check directly with the Village before assuming business as usual, rather than working off what a neighbor heard three weeks ago.

Where The Regulars Are Showing Up Instead

Milleridge isn't the only address on this stretch of Jericho carrying weight for people who eat here regularly, and the restaurants nearby haven't needed an emergency to earn a following. A few spots that were already part of the rotation before August are seeing some of that overflow now:

• Fanatico Italian Bistro & Bar, an Italian spot with a full bar that handles parties up to 55 guests, the kind of place that picks up catering requests for the communions and birthday gatherings that might have gone to a banquet hall.
• Opus Steakhouse, known for dry-aged steaks and whole fish flown in daily, set inside a reimagined North Shore mansion that also books private events.
• Tap Room Jericho, a gastropub at 1 Jericho Turnpike with live music and DJ sets on weekends, along with a brunch service that has become its own draw.
• Market Bistro, a neighborhood restaurant built around seasonal, market-driven American cooking.

None of these replace what the Milleridge Cottage offered as a full-service banquet venue with its own peacocks wandering the grounds and a decades-long run of family milestones. But they're absorbing some of the weekly habit, the Sunday dinner or the Friday night out that used to default to Milleridge without a second thought.

The Split Is The Story

The easy version of this story is "beloved Long Island landmark damaged by fire," and that version is true as far as it goes. The more useful version, the one that actually changes what a Jericho resident does next, is that this address was never one business to begin with. It's a main restaurant on its own rebuild clock, a banquet hall now sidelined after initially being cleared, and a Village of small shops that came through the night largely intact. Anyone planning a wedding, a holiday party, or just a Saturday outing with the kids needs to know which of those three they're actually counting on, because right now they're each running on a different schedule, and nobody outside the Dover Group has said when any of them will be handed back the word "open" without a caveat attached.

Jericho has absorbed bigger changes than a single restaurant fire and kept its rhythm. The Village square will likely fill with strollers and pumpkin patch visitors again at some point, whether that's this October or next. What residents deserve in the meantime is a straight answer about which parts of Milleridge to plan around and which to wait on, and right now that answer is still being written one closure notice at a time.

If you're weighing a move to Jericho or already call it home and want a local read on what's changing block by block, Michelle Zhao Group keeps a close eye on the neighborhood beyond the listings. Reach out anytime you want a straight answer about this community, whether or not real estate is the reason you're asking.