Photo (from a previous year) by @alwayssomethingpretty
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A tradition since 1971, the West 69th Street Block Association has confirmed to ILTUWS that the street will be closed from Central Park West to Broadway to celebrate Halloween this October 31. Get your costumes ready for candy giveaways, plenty of frights, and prizes for the buildings’ best décor.
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From a chilling, thrilling haunted house to a Spider-Man (or sometimes Superman) scaling the façade, the iconic event draws around 5,000 people each year from the neighborhood and neighboring states like New Jersey. We caught up with a couple of stalwarts of the event to learn more about the 54-year cauldron of Halloween magic that has kept it thriving.
“Well, I’m old,” joked Barbara Good, when we told her she’s “old school” when it comes to prepping the spooky spirit of the West 69th Street Halloween happening. A current member of the Block Association’s steering committee, she recalled, “When I first started doing it, I had a neighbor next door whose family had an apple orchard upstate, and I had a great big tub, and we had children actually bobbing for apples.” Good said this popular attraction was eventually shelved because of the large crowds that now attend. “We always had little fishing games,” she added, where kids could cast a reel and fish for prizes. “There’s some things that we cut back on, and there’s some things that we’ve added over the years.”
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In 2024, Good leveraged her artistic muscle and worked with children to create an art piece on a communal orange tablecloth. It was a hit, with kids also adding sticky notes to the collective artwork. “It really kind of gets them psyched for Halloween.”One year, Good dressed up as a “Hot Ticket.” “Like a billboard in the front and a billboard in the back,” she explained. “I put about six playbills in the front and on the back. Then I had a top hat, a cane, and my sexy stockings on with high heels.”
We loved the creativity in this double entendre — a “hot ticket” meaning both a tough ticket to get and someone you’d love to go out with, but not an easy date. “Yeah, you use your imagination, you know,” she said after we gushed about how impressed we were.
ALSO READ: Spooky Upper West Side Halloween Brownstones (2022)
Good likes to collect decorations from over the years — either her own or ones left behind — and usually feels out her mood each season before deciding what to put up outside. “I thought maybe this year I’d do some new decorations. I just have the ugliest old ghosts and everything. But I don’t know what I’m going to do, because I’m going to work with the team and see what we can put together.” She’s also known for making things out of recycled materials, like turning milk jugs into hats or using the orange netting from a tangerine crate to make masks.
On average, West 69th Street spends about $4,000 on candy each year. In the past, they bought their sweets from a distributor on the Upper East Side around 100th Street and Madison Avenue, who would cut them a great deal. The vendor supplied newsstands across the city, and since newsstands also sold cigarettes, the distributor would get packs of playing cards with branded inserts from various cigarette companies.
ALSO READ: Haunted Buildings of the UWS
Good, whose favorite candy is Snickers, recalled that the vendor would toss her packages of playing cards, each with a cigarette ad slipped inside. She and her friends would pull the ads from every deck before handing the cards to older kids or dads who came to the festivities.
While the story of the original Halloween event is well-known in Upper West Side folklore, it began with Gwen Verdon (Fosse) looking for a fun and safe way to celebrate fright night with her daughter, Nicole. Verdon approached neighbors around West 69th Street to help hand out candy and organize a costume parade by Christ and Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church on the block.
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Penny Shaw, former block association president and now a member of the steering committee, shared a yarn that blew us away. “There were about 30 kids,” she recalled while sitting up in her apartment during our visit. “They paraded in a big circle, and we gave some prizes for the best costume.”Shaw went on to describe one especially memorable moment: the children were marching around when Verdon came down the street, lifted by four stagehands, dressed as Lady Godiva with her hair flowing, seated high on a stage-like platform. “It was pretty overwhelming. A lot of the other children were a little jealous and intimidated by it. I could see why—they really did a real thing with her. It was very cute.” Shaw credited Verdon for being very active with the block association, contributing donations but especially engaging with the community.
We commented to Shaw that the incredible Lady Godiva costume perhaps set the stage for the following year, raising the bar for spectacle. “I don’t know,” she replied, like a sage. “We just try to get by at this point. We don’t think about topping anything, because we can’t. First of all, it’s amazing,” she noted, as the same core group has been together for a long time now. “Look, Barbara (Good) is going to be 80, I’m 88, and we’re still doing this stuff, you know.”
Shaw is looking out for a younger generation to help carry the torch for an event known far and wide, with people coming from New Jersey in limousines, she shared. “They’re all grown up, even the grandchildren grown up,” said the grandmother about her family, who all experienced years of Halloween events but have more or less moved on. “Maybe I’ll get some great-grandchildren eventually,” she said with a smile.
Shaw credits having a rent-stabilized apartment as a core factor in still living on the block while others “come and go.” Regarding the asking rents these days, she added, “They better buy a house in New Jersey when they can. It’s a lot of money.”
In all seriousness, Shaw shared that in 1991, “The Block Association started to falter. It just became less and less active, and pretty soon it was pretty nonexistent.” Shaw was president and treasurer during this period.
During that time, two neighbors—Mary Ann Terranova and Susan (Shaw couldn’t recall her last name)—lived in the same building on West 69th and had children of the appropriate age for Halloween festivities. “It was that in-between time, and they, on their own, organized Halloween. There were donations involved; they collected the money, helped put up some signs, and managed the event,” she recalled.
A decade later, after the tragedy of 9/11, Shaw was approached by someone standing on the corner of the block: “We’ve got to get the Block Association back together. We need the support of our neighbors.” People were reluctant to serve as president, so Shaw stepped up: “I said, I’ll be the president, and that’s how it got brought back.”
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When the organization was revived, Terranova and Susan showed up with a check for about $1,400 that they had been saving over the years from donations. “I’m not sure of the exact number, but it was quite a lot,” Shaw said. “It’s a very interesting story because they kept it going when we weren’t functioning.” She spoke with a sort of grateful pride, seeing the community come together—reminiscent of the Beatles’ song With a Little Help from My Friends—even if the neighbors didn’t really know each other. Community finds a way.Shaw estimated that these neighbors had been managing the Halloween event for eight to ten years. “There were a lot of years in there,” she said.
Terranova still lives on the block, so we look forward to seeing these cornerstones of the Halloween festivities come together again this year.
When we asked Barbara Good if living right off Broadway in the creative heart of NYC was in many ways the “secret sauce” for such a successful, viral Halloween event and close-knit community, she responded, “Well, I think living in New York opens your mind to many possibilities. And I think we’re a bunch of creative people here, and you have to be somewhat creative to survive.”
See you on Halloween! I’ll be dressed as Max from Where the Wild Things Are. Feel free to say hi — you might see me handing out candy.
Halloween hours on West 69th Street are from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
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