Faces in the Crowd: Washington Market Park's Halloween Extravaganza

Seeing double at the Washington Market Park Halloween Party on Sunday, Oct. 25. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

Tribeca’s Washington Market Park was a sea of costumed revelers and activities Sunday afternoon, Oct. 25, as more than 4,000 kids and former kids paraded into the Halloween-festooned green space for the neighborhood’s biggest annual event.

Led down Greenwich Street by the Lesbian & Gay Big Apple Corps marching band, the crowd found a dizzying array of entertainment awaiting them, from  jugglers, stunt artists and the Baby Soda jazz band, to carnival games, a very lifelike Big Bad Wolf and a “haunted” garden complete with cobwebs and tombstones. (“Here lies non-Tribecan Mr. Koehler. He got run over by a double stroller,” read one epithet.)

Organized by Friends of Washington Market Park, the celebration began the evening before with the park’s first Pumpkin Carving Contest and an impressive 52 entries vying for the titles of “Most Creative,” “Funniest,” and “Scariest,” plus best carved creation by a child.

Not surprisingly, it takes a large corps of helpers to make a Halloween party like this happen. Planning begins as early as May, said Erica Martini, co-president of Friends of Washington Market Park, with 12 members of the friends group and 36 New York Cares volunteers on hand for the big event.

Below, a video slideshow featuring some of the thousands of costumed partiers, small and large, with musical accompaniment by the Lesbian & Gay Big Apple Corps.