Cobble Hill's Halloween Has No City Street Closure, So the Neighborhood Built Its Own

This year, Cobble Hill's Halloween season comes almost entirely from the Cobble Hill Association and one small park on Clinton Street. NYC DOT's 2026 Trick-or-Streets program lists no Cobble Hill site and no Court Street site. Its park events and its parade all start at Cobble Hill Park, and the season's last stop is a Court Street dining room that has just changed hands for the first time in generations.

Read in order, the calendar starts with a morning of volunteer park work and builds to a 4 p.m. parade on Halloween afternoon. The details below tell you when to show up, what to bring and where to eat afterward.

The city's map skips this neighborhood

Trick-or-Streets is a large program. On Halloween it closes 45 Brooklyn blocks and plazas to cars, and it runs across 160 sites citywide through October. Several sites are within a short walk of Cobble Hill:

• Joralemon Street and Columbia Place in Willowtown
• Hoyt Street in Boerum Hill
• Montgomery Place and 11th Street in Park Slope
• Pearl Street Plaza in Dumbo

None of the Brooklyn sites in DOT's 2026 signature or partner event tables is in Cobble Hill.

That leaves the Cobble Hill Association to fill the gap. It organizes the dog party and the parade at the park on Clinton Street at Verandah Place, plus a window painting on Court Street. Before any of that, it schedules a volunteer morning to care for the park.

Four dates, three of them in one park

Here are the dates in order. The first one gets the least attention.

1. Saturday, October 24, 9 to 11 a.m.: Cobble Hill Park Stewardship, Fall Volunteer Day #2. The event is at 260 Clinton Street. All ages are welcome, and the Association asks for an RSVP. Community Board 6's listing says volunteers will prune, weed and possibly plant. Gloves and tools are provided, children can take part with an adult, and drop-ins are welcome.
2. Sunday, October 25, 1 to 3 p.m.: Halloween Dog Costume Party. This is the Association's annual party for costumed dogs, held in the same park the afternoon after the cleanup. The organizers collect clean towels, blankets, toys and unopened pet food for the Queens Animal Care Center, so bring a bag of donations if you have one.
3. Late October, date to be announced: the 9th Annual Cobble Hill Halloween Window Painting on Court Street. More on this one below.
4. Saturday, October 31, 4 p.m.: Cobble Hill Halloween Parade. The parade leaves Cobble Hill Park and winds through neighborhood streets. There is no registration. Just come in costume.

The order matters. The park gets its last big round of fall work on a Saturday morning, and the next afternoon it is full of dogs in costume. Volunteers who come to the 24th are getting the park ready for the next two Halloween events held there, the dog party and the parade send-off.

The fall stewardship series doesn't end with Halloween. The Association's calendar lists another park volunteer day on November 21. On October 3, it joined the Columbia Waterfront Street Association for a City of Forest Day tree-care morning at Van Voorhees Playground, just outside Cobble Hill.

Court Street becomes the gallery

The window painting moves the season off the park and onto the main shopping street. Kids paint Halloween scenes directly onto shop windows on Court Street between Pacific and Union Streets, and supplies are provided. The Association runs the event with Mason Lane Art Advisory. More than 75 children took part last year.

Eligibility is the most neighborhood-specific rule of the season. The painting is open to students in grades 1 through 10 who live between Atlantic Avenue and Union Street and between Smith Street and Columbia Street. They can paint alone or in pairs. Space is limited, and Association members get the registration link first.

As of a mid-September family events guide, the 2026 date was still to be announced. The Association's own events page hasn't listed it yet. If your child wants a window, check your membership and keep an eye on the Cobble Hill Association events page. Those two steps decide whether you get a spot.

When the windows are done, they turn the stretch of Court Street from Pacific to Union into an outdoor gallery for the last days of the month. That stretch includes one block that drew a lot of attention this September.

The block between Baltic and Kane

Sam's Restaurant at 238 Court Street, between Baltic and Kane, is inside the window-painting stretch. It reopened in September. According to Brooklyn Magazine, Sam's has served red-sauce dishes, pizza, steaks and chops on Court Street since 1930. For nearly all of those 96 years, the Migliaccio family ran it. This year Lou Migliaccio, who was born in the building, handed it to Georgia Fulton. Fulton was a server at Long Island Bar and had been a weekly regular at Sam's.

"I truly just stepped in the door about five years ago and immediately fell in love with the place. So I committed myself to coming once a week for all those years, to develop a relationship with Lou and with the space."

Georgia Fulton, speaking to Brooklyn Magazine

The reopening landed on a familiar schedule. Grub Street reported that Sam's always closed in August under Migliaccio and came back well after Labor Day. Fulton had planned a midsummer reopening but moved it to September 10 because a film crew was using the space.

Much of the room is the same. The old green-trimmed dishes are still in use, salads still come in wooden bowls with metal tongs, and the pizza oven still has no thermostat and runs on two gas pipes. "These ovens just need to be babied a little bit," chef consultant Andrew Halitski told Grub Street. Halitski previously ran La Rose. Brooklyn Magazine wrote that he recreates Migliaccio's classics alongside new dishes that "wouldn't have been out of place a half-century back."

The menu keeps the celery-and-olives appetizer, the baked clams, and the veal parm with a side of spaghetti or ziti. The new dishes are orecchiette with broccoli rabe and sausage, a Caesar salad, rigatoni alla vodka and a pork chop Milanese. Rene Hidalgo runs the bar. His list mixes classics like the Singapore Sling and a Rob Roy with house drinks, including a "shakerato" version of the Spaghett made with Aperol and Miller High Life.

Sam's matters for Halloween because of the timing. The parade leaves the park at 4 p.m. on a Saturday, and both Sam's website and Brooklyn Magazine list Saturday dinner starting at 5 p.m. That leaves about an hour for the parade and trick-or-treating before the doors open on Court Street. The Brooklyn Bridge Parents family events guide calls the blocks on either side of Court Street some of the best trick-or-treating in Brooklyn. The two sources disagree about Sunday hours. The restaurant's website lists a 4 p.m. Sunday opening, and the magazine lists 5 p.m., so check samsbrooklyn.com before planning a Sunday visit around the dog party.

Fitting in the other parades

You can make more than one parade on Halloween because the neighborhood parades are spread across the day. The Brooklyn Heights Association's parade starts at 10:30 a.m. at the north end of the Promenade and ends with a bake sale at the south end. Cobble Hill's starts at 4 p.m. Park Slope's lines up by 6 p.m. at Seventh Avenue and 14th Street and steps off at 6:30.

The Cobble Hill parade is the only one of the three that starts from a neighborhood park instead of a promenade or a commercial avenue. A household could go to the Promenade in the morning, march from Clinton Street in the afternoon and still sit down for dinner on Court Street.

A few more October changes on Court Street

Some other Court Street news affects your Halloween errands. On October 1, Cobble Hill Collective reported that Smør was opening its Carroll Gardens location that day at Court and President Streets. It serves pastries, coffee, breakfast and lunch and has a to-go window. The same newsletter reported that Joe & The Juice is coming to Court Street next to The RealReal. "Opening Soon" signs are up, but no date has been announced.

Here are the dates to put on the fridge. Park work is Saturday, October 24, 9 to 11 a.m., at 260 Clinton Street. The dog party is Sunday, October 25, 1 to 3 p.m., with a bag of towels or unopened pet food for the Queens Animal Care Center. The parade leaves Cobble Hill Park at 4 p.m. on Saturday, October 31, and Sam's opens at 5. The window-painting date is still to come on the Association's events page.

Halloween on Court Street shows one of the things buyers ask us about most: what a block is like to live on. If you're thinking about how your Cobble Hill home fits into the life of these blocks, or what it could be worth today, The Mazurek Team would be glad to talk it through with you, starting with a free home valuation.