Pumpkin blaze sleepy hollow6/30/2023 ![]() ![]() The Blaze’s volunteer army - about 1,000 in total, often from local businesses and organizations like the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts of America - scoop pumpkins and light candles. In any given year, another 10 to 20 volunteers help carve and scoop throughout the season, to replace deteriorating jack-o’-lanterns Natiello says they replace pumpkins almost daily during a warmer fall, and every few days in cooler weather. In October, we’re talking about next year already.”Īs the chief designer, he’s responsible for coming up with themes for the pumpkin installations and creating stencils that his team of 10 carvers use as blueprints. Natiello says, “We’re always redesigning or thinking. June through September are the busiest months for the Blaze staff, but planning for the event is now a year-round job. As with 2020, tickets for this year are being sold in advance for specific time slots, and all guests will be required to wear masks and practice social distancing. This year will be “a little larger, but less than what it typically would be,” says Schweitzer. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, both Blaze sites operated at about 33 percent capacity, and most visitors came from New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. A sister event was also added, in collaboration with Nassau County, at Old Bethpage Village Restoration on Long Island. The 2020 Blaze featured the same schedule and number of pumpkins, though visitation was down due to the pandemic. (Historic Hudson Valley declined to share the costs of mounting the event.) Those guests contributed $18 million to the regional economy in the form of ticket sales, hotel stays, and purchases at local restaurants and businesses. According to Historic Hudson Valley, the 2019 Blaze featured a whopping 7,000 jack-o’-lanterns and welcomed more than 175,000 visitors from around the country. It has also expanded from just a handful of nights to a nearly three-months-long showcase. The Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze has since nearly tripled in size and attracted exponentially more visitors. In cooler weather, they are swapped out every few days. ![]() In warm weather, pumpkins have to be replaced daily. Out went the standard backyard gap-toothed grinners in came highly detailed, design-minded sculptures meant to evoke not only the traditional creepy disembodied heads and boogeymen, but also larger-than-life figures. Michael Natiello, creative director for Historic Hudson Valley and the Blaze, took his cues from innovative gourd whittlers like the team at Martha Stewart and Brooklyn’s Maniac Pumpkin Carvers. ![]() But sprawling Van Cortlandt Manor, built in the early 1700s by Dutch landowners and located 12 miles north in what Schweitzer calls “Greater Sleepy Hollow country,” proved to be the perfect location. While the Gothic-meets-Dutch aesthetics of Sunnyside might have provided a match for a Halloween festival, its grounds weren’t equipped to handle hundreds of cars. “We hit on this idea of an artistic display of jack-o’-lanterns.” “We wanted to do something that was different than haunted houses or the typical Halloween fair,” says Schweitzer. “Irving’s Legend,” a seasonal performance at Sunnyside, the Tarrytown home of “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” author Washington Irving, had been a big success. Rob Schweitzer, vice president of communications and commerce for Historic Hudson Valley, recalls its origins as a fundraiser for the nonprofit. Now in its 17th year, the Blaze began as a humble local event - or as humble as a festival featuring 2,500 pumpkins and a few thousand visitors can be. But when it comes to Halloween festivals that combine chills with artistic panache, all set against the extraordinary backdrop of an eighteenth-century riverside landscape, the Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze in Croton-on-Hudson rises to the top of many best-of lists. ![]() Sleepy Hollow or Poughkeepsie’s Witchcraft District may be the spookiest areas of the Hudson Valley each October. Staff construct the most elaborate displays, like this tunnel of starry pumpkins, and an army of 1,000 volunteers helps scoop and light the pumpkins. ![]()
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