The Village Halloween Parade Is Born

On October 31, 1974, puppeteer and mask maker Ralph Lee organized an informal procession of puppets around his home in the Westbeth Artists Community in the West Village. Lee, who had lived at Westbeth since it opened in 1970 and worked with the Mettawee River Theatre Company, had been asked for years by the Theater for the New City to put together some kind of Halloween event, and he finally agreed after a similar production he had staged at Bennington College turned out well. He built the first parade out of masks and giant puppets he already had on hand from other shows, and neighbors and their kids fell in behind them for a walk through the courtyard. It was small and homemade, nothing like the mile-long spectacle it would become, but it worked well enough that by the following year the route stretched all the way to Washington Square Park.