By Jeff French Segall
Thousands of young and not-so-young celebrants, many in imaginative costumes, wound their way through the Halloween horror-show within the maze that is built each year in the front garden area of St. Martins Tower, at 65 West 90th Street, for the delight and pleasure of all. After enduring the frightening roars and screams of goblins, ghouls, skeletons and werewolves, the revelers then entered the building’s lobby where they were given trick or treat candies. The rain threatened, but at no time ever interfered with the fun.
The maze was built by building superintendent Anderson Lopes and his wife, Natasha, with help from his building crew and headed by our neighbor, Maze Founder and new 90th Street Block Association President, David Owens. The maze took on its utter fascination thanks to the help of a squad of creative and artistic residents who painted and decorated the maze’s walls, bringing them to their gloriously horrnedous life. It takes about a month to assemble and decorate the maze each year.
If you weren’t there, enjoy it here at a distance through these photos.
The expression on the face of the girl looking at the skeleton is priceless.
What an amazing gift to the neighborhood
Did anyone get good photos of the three folks driving around in their mario karts? Loved that.
Very nice. How come they didn’t have something like that for us kids in the neighborhood 60 years ago. I’m 71 now and very jealous.
“They” is the key word in your question. If there were no volunteers, if there was no local leadership, then nothing happened. What is unique here is that St. Martins Tower has developed a building culture which places high value on doing things together to make the building and neighborhood a better place. Additionally, the West 90th Street Block Association has also fostered similar projects. Its members live in various buildings on the block. The cohesiveness forged by the leaderships and volunteer members of both organizations has created the Annual 90th Street Dog Show, annual tree plantings, cake sales, garage sales, and, of course, the annual Halloween maze. In short, the answer is people.
It is more than FANTASTIC and soooo such and absolutely UNIQUely creative New York experience, The builder and his gifted and artistic wife are one of a kind…and his “crew” are like a talented ‘family’. Each participant contributed as a “unit of one”.
Keep up and we can’t wait for next year.