New York’s Halloween Stoop Displays Turn Brownstone Steps Into Seasonal Attractions

New York turns the stoop into a Halloween stage

In New York, limited space has made the front stoop a small but highly visible canvas for Halloween. Across the country, people decorate yards with towering skeletons and elaborate scenes; here, neighbors work with the steps and entrances they have. The results have outgrown the jack-o’-lantern. Locals and visitors now seek out stoops dressed for the season, from oversized pumpkins to full tableaux. They’re dressed to be seen. The appeal isn’t only the spectacle. These displays turn a neighborhood walk into an occasion, and some have become local landmarks. In Park Slope, the annual question arrives before fall is underway: Where is the big pumpkin? Will it return? A brownstone there draws the crowds with a pumpkin weighing close to 1,000 pounds. Its fame even earned the house a Google Maps listing: “Big Pumpkin House”. The person behind the tradition is Charlie Pigott, a fourth-generation Park Slope resident and local real estate broker. He’s also heard the Charlie Brown Great Pumpkin jokes before. PAINT THE TOWN DEAD
A Park Slope brownstone swaps familiar orange decorations for towering blood-red skeletons and black pumpkins. Photographed by Poupay Jutharat.

How the Big Pumpkin got bigger

Pigott says Halloween had long been a festive occasion for his family, but the giant pumpkin entered the picture about a decade ago by chance. Driving home from his daughter’s boarding school in Connecticut, he spotted a pumpkin by the roadside that he estimated at 150 pounds. He brought it home for the stoop. A few years later, his son George ordered pumpkins from a Pennsylvania farm, only to find they’d cracked. He sent his father a photo of a much larger alternative, though the image gave no sense of scale. Pigott’s response: “Bring it to Brooklyn.” The pumpkin turned out to weigh around 800 or 900 pounds. Pigott remembers opening the U-Haul and seeing the enormous squash for the first time. Neighbors gathered about 10 people to lift it onto the stoop. They loved it. “After we went big, there was no going back.” THE HERO ITEM
Charlie Pigott’s Brooklyn stoop centers on a giant pumpkin, though the display is relatively restrained by the city’s standards. Photographed by Poupay Jutharat. Pigott and George begin their search in August, looking at farms in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Upstate New York. They want a tall pumpkin with rich color, a classic shape, and—by Pigott’s own measure—a good stem. This year’s selection came from Honesdale, Pennsylvania, and took a forklift to get onto the stoop. Pigott calls his display minimalist. The pumpkin, he says, suits a harvest and Thanksgiving mood more than a Halloween one, and stays in place until just after Thanksgiving. That distinction is part of the attraction: the stoop works as autumn decoration as much as seasonal spectacle. For Pigott, the tradition is also a way to thank the neighborhood that raised him, his children, his parents, and now his grandchildren. “I just want to bring joy to my neighborhood,” he says.

Stoops that tell a story

Other New Yorkers have turned their entrances into attractions, too. Stoop and the City is among the accounts documenting how these displays travel online as well as through the neighborhood. This year’s themes range from the Knicks’ championship win to a skeleton wedding, neon pink spiders, and “The American Musuem of Stuff”, with Ozempic and ranch dressing among its exhibits. Some homeowners bring in professionals. Manscapers, a landscape design firm, has worked on New York stoop displays since 2019, co-founder Garrett McGee tells Vogue. For a client on West 76th Street this year, the team set out to make the entrance feel as if a lush fall garden had grown around it. They used oranges, yellows, and reds, with chrysanthemums, marigolds, black-eyed Susans, ornamental grasses, and hibiscus. THE NOT-SO-SECRET GARDEN
Manscapers designed this Upper West Side stoop as a natural “showstopper.” Photographed by Poupay Jutharat.

A Halloween stoop becomes a neighborhood gathering place

For Upper West Side designer Hillary Wallace, decorating her stoop began as a simple rule of townhouse ownership: if you have one, you should put something on it. She bought the home more than 11 years ago. A Ralph Lauren alum, Wallace later ran her own interior design firm, Simon Wallace, before retiring a few years ago. She shares her work on Instagram. Her Halloween display now draws visitors from around the world, with lines reportedly forming outside. This year’s theme takes cues from the Gothic mansion in Crimson Peak. Wallace sources pumpkins at an auction in Pennsylvania, including black varieties and pumpkins grown in face-shaped molds.

The display has grown more elaborate over time, Wallace says, partly because she admits she can be “a little out of control.” But the scale is part of the point: she likes having a place where people can come celebrate. She thinks the city’s Halloween stoop tradition grew stronger after COVID, and says decorating is a way to bring neighbors together. That community role may matter more than the spectacle. Last year, her stoop welcomed an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 trick-or-treaters; she’s bracing for even more this time, with a little nervousness and plenty of anticipation.