The 10065 Zip Code (Manhattan, Upper East Side) is probably one of the best places in the world to see extravagant Halloween Displays for free. These are some favorites.
Falcone Mansion Werewolves
HAPPY HALLOWEEN
HAPPY HALLOWEEN
Addams Family Fifth Avenue Mansion Opposite Jeff Koons
American Horror Story
Manhattan Carnegie Hill Townhouse Mansion Crows
East 92nd Street Caution Tape Mansion
Above and Below
More of the Falcone Mansion Display, including a hearse and a ghoul on a swing
Gauntlet of Horrors
Ghost of the Great Crash
Creepy Werewolves or Gargoyles?
Colorful Collection of Ghouls
Park Avenue Halloween Mansion
Two-Headed Princess
Hedge-Fund Halloween
Manhattan's Upper East Side
Manhattan's Upper East Side child-friendly aggressiveness is at no point more in evidence than in the days leading up to Oct. 31; we are now in the era of what one Park Avenue exile calls “a hedge-fund Halloween.” By this she means the relatively new tradition among town-house owners, mostly between Fifth Avenue and Lexington Avenue, to appoint the stoops and facades of their buildings as if someone had asked them to enact a 1%-ers nightmare: “Imagine that you’d failed to acquire some of the most expensive real estate on earth. Pretend you lived in Brooklyn instead, and not in Cobble Hill but in Dyker Heights, that distant precinct famous for its polyvinyl snowmen and street-clogging paeans to Christmas.”
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Some people might wonder what extremely wealthy people would do with potential further cuts to the capital gains tax, but these people don’t realize how many hay bales there are in the world, how many glitter pumpkins, mock corpses, enormous fake spiders, moving cobwebs and mechanical skeletons to buy and stage.
The ivy isn't the only creepy thing hanging off the Lasry family mansion at East 74th Street. Bloody, severed heads, screaming ghouls, skeletons and SpongeBob decorations have passersby doing double takes at an over-the-top Halloween display that has become a tradition for the family of hedge-fund manager Marc Lasry and his wife, Cathy Lasry, former president of the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy Committee.
"It's more of a family thing we do to stay together," said Sophie Lasry, 18, one of the couple's five children, about the seven-year family ritual of decking their house for the season.
For several years now, Marc Lasry, the co-founder of Avenue Capital, has decorated the mansion with bloodied bodies hanging from the balcony, skeleton heads, a giant inflatable ghost, swinging bats and a life-size, clothed skeleton affixed to a tree on the sidewalk. One afternoon last week, tourists and children gathered to take pictures of a dancing skeleton beside the front door. It was singing “Super Freak.” (Perhaps in the spirit of competition, the hedge fund manager Philip A. Falcone and his wife, Lisa Maria, have lavishly decorated the exterior of their 27,525-square-foot house on East 67th Street even though it is currently a construction site).
In the East 90s, similar expressions of enthusiasm abound and multiply. A town house on 91st Street between Park and Lexington features a giant inflatable coffin from which a vampire pops up every few seconds. On top of the stoop, guarding the front door, is an approximately eight-foot-tall plastic witch. Skeleton heads are submerged in the landscaping. “It has become an annual tradition to judge which of these displays are the most elaborate and which are professionally done,” Philip Gorrivan, the prominent interior designer and a Carnegie Hill parent, explained “There’s always a newcomer every year, a brownstone that has been completely gutted and renovated, and they’re typically the most incredible.”
It should go without saying that on the Upper East Side, where D.I.Y. is to many a foreign acronym, much of what is done in one’s home is done by someone else. In regard to Halloween, as the designer Celerie Kemble put it, “there has to be major credit-card waving and outsourcing; perhaps I’m cynical, but I’m awe-struck and a little frightened.”
As I toured the Upper East Side last week, I came to think of as utterly restrained the homeowner on East 80th Street who limited the fuss simply to 15 gourds and pumpkins.
While we might have expected to find some indignation on the part of the Carnegie Hill Neighbors, that upholder of preservation and enforcer of taste, the association turns out to be an avid supporter. For the second year in a row it will sponsor a party and costume contest, for which East 92nd Street between Madison and Park Avenues, a decorated block, will be closed. Lo van der Valk, president of the association, pointed to the importance of “private enterprise” for this booming culture of Halloween. Let the fogies, the bitter, the barren, the Scrooges flee early in horror to Palm Beach.
Spooky Maine Halloween
There are plenty of places in age-old Maine to find a spooky inspiration for Hallowen displays. One of my favorites is in old church cemeteries. The graves nearest the churches are usually the oldest. Above: The Spurwink Church in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Erected in 1802 this style of architecture is a blend of Federal, Gothic and Greek Revival that was frequently used in the early 19th century.
The church sits on a hill above the Spurwink River, upriver from where the first settlers built their homes. The church's historic character is enhanced by the beauty of the salt marshes it overlooks. Had I been at home with my iMac I would have airbrushed out the power lines, which kind of distract from its hot set ready look. Unfortunately I do not have that capacity on my laptop.
Above: One of the oldest gravestones I found in the Spurwink Graveyard has a great inscription. While badly eroded I believe it reads:
Frederic W. Jordan, died Apr. 1, 1859,
Æ. 38 yrs. 8 mos.
"Happy soul, thy days are ended,
Thy term of probation is run,
Thy footsteps are upon the celestial shore,
And the race of immortals begun.
The inscription is a compilation of 17th century inspirational verses, hymns and poems. It will make a great addition to my 21st-century Halloween display when I recreate it.
The Annie C. Maguire memorial is on the grounds of the Portland Head Lighthouse. Annie C. Maguire was a British three-masted barque, sailing from Buenos Aires, on December 24, 1886, when she struck the ledge at Portland Head Light, Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Lighthouse Keeper Joshua Strout, his son, wife, and volunteers rigged an ordinary ladder as a gangplank between the shore and the ledge the ship was heeled against to rescue Captain O'Neil, the ship's master, his wife, two mates and the nine-man crew. It would be a great Halloween scene, with skeletons on the shipwreck making they way to shore across the heaving ladder.
The Maguire memorial is steps away from the spot where legend says that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow sat and wrote his poem "The Lighthouse."
Sail on, Sail on ye stately ships
And with your floating bridge
the ocean span
Be mine to guard this light
from all eclipse
Be yours to bring man near
unto man.
Above: The "Barely Dead Cemetery" near Falmouth, Maine. I liked how the sun was in the perfect position behind the spooky house to illuminate this shot of an elaborate Halloween display. My favorite character is the werewolf at bottom left of the image, trying to crawl out of the cemetery.
Above: A Halloween Wedding complete with ring-bearing, juvenile zombies, on Highway 9 between Falmouth and Cumberland, Maine.
Above: A zombie road crew on a tractor near Cape Elizabeth, Maine.
Above and Below: A pumpkin festival in Scarborough, Maine.
The most interesting specimens were the Brodé Galeux D'Eysines, or Peanut-Shell Pumpkins (Cucurbita maxima), in the shot above. This heirloom's French name translates "embroidered with warts from Eysines," referring to a small town in southwest France. This heirloom pumpkin's random "peanut" warts bedeck the flesh-colored outer skin.
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great video about the artistic process
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