On Halloween, New York Hands Its Streets Back to the Neighbors

New Yorkers didn't need a city program to think of this. On West 69th Street, between Broadway and Central Park West, the Halloween block party dates to 1971, when it was started by the Broadway star Gwen Verdon. It now draws thousands of people, and when it was called off in 2020, West Side Rag reported it was the first cancellation in nearly fifty years. This year it is on DOT's list, 6pm to 8pm.

The citywide version grew out of something more recent. The city created Open Streets as an emergency program at the start of the pandemic, letting neighbors close blocks to traffic from May 2020. According to the city Comptroller, it peaked at 326 sites in 2021 and was down to 232 by 2024. Trick-or-Streets runs on that same idea, scaled up for one month: a block association, merchants' group or other local partner hosts, DOT clears the street with the city's permit office and the NYPD, and for an afternoon a street becomes a room the whole neighborhood can use.

New York has about 6,300 miles of streets, by the Comptroller's count, and nearly all of them are organized around vehicles. Halloween is the one night a year when that arrangement looks most out of step, because it is the night the city's smallest residents are most likely to be walking around in the dark, in masks, darting between doorways.

The numbers bear this out. A study in JAMA Pediatrics, using U.S. federal crash records from 1975 to 2016, found that the risk of a pedestrian being killed was 43 percent higher on Halloween evenings than on comparable nights, and roughly ten times higher for children aged four to eight. Risk peaked around 6pm. We couldn't find any city evaluation of whether Trick-or-Streets reduces crashes, so we won't claim it does. The case for it is simpler: on a block with no cars, a five-year-old can cross the street without anyone holding their breath.

There is a quieter benefit, too. A closed street makes a block legible to itself. People who have nodded at each other for years end up standing in the same patch of asphalt, comparing costumes. Nothing about that needs a statistic.

Every block below is on NYC DOT's official list for Saturday, October 31, with the hours DOT gives. In Manhattan, West 69th Street's party runs 6pm to 8pm. Strivers' Row hosts a Halloween festival on West 139th Street, between Frederick Douglass and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. boulevards, from 3pm to 8pm. In the Village, West 11th Street between Washington and Greenwich streets is car-free from 3pm to 10pm, and West 78th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus runs 4pm to 9pm.

In Brooklyn, Montgomery Place in Park Slope, between Prospect Park West and Eighth Avenue, is open from 11am to 8pm, and the Park Slope Civic Council's Halloween Parade marches down Seventh Avenue from 3rd to 14th Street, 6:30pm to 9pm. In Brooklyn Heights, Joralemon Street between Furman and Hicks streets is car-free from 4pm to 8pm, a short walk from the Promenade. The Bronx's signature event is at James Baldwin Plaza, by Mosholu Parkway, from 10am to 3pm, and in Staten Island, Park Place hosts the Hamilton Park Halloween Block Party from 1pm to 5pm. Queens has more than a dozen locations, many of them in the early afternoon.

The biggest closure of all is Sixth Avenue for the Village Halloween Parade, which steps off at 7pm. Our Halloween guide has the parade route, where to watch, how to march, and the rest of the season's events.

The full list lives at nyc.gov/trickorstreets, sorted by date, with an interactive map. The map shows the whole month by default; move its date slider to October 31 to see Halloween alone. DOT warns that the map can lag behind the list, so treat the list as the final word, and notes that events are subject to delay or cancellation. Hours vary a lot: some blocks open in the morning, many start mid-afternoon so younger children can be home before dark, and a few run late into the evening.

New this year are free neighborhood walking tours led by the Municipal Art Society, which need advance registration, and Street Lab activities outside some public schools. The city says it is handing out 75,000 pieces of candy.

A car-free block is only car-free during its listed hours, and only for that stretch. The corners at either end are ordinary intersections, and when a block's window closes it is an ordinary street again. That matters most in the early evening, the hours the JAMA study flagged as the riskiest.

The New York Department of State's standing Halloween advice is sensible and short: young children should trick-or-treat with an adult; put reflective tape on costumes and treat bags; cross at corners and in crosswalks; teach children to make eye contact with a driver before stepping in front of a car; and walk, don't run, across the street with phones put away. Drivers should be careful passing stopped vehicles, which may be letting children out or across.

Then go and stand in the middle of the road. It is, for one evening, exactly where you're supposed to be.