Montague Street between Clinton and Hicks Streets has gone car-free on seven Sundays this fall, running from September 13 through October 25, ten in the morning to seven at night each time. The Montague Street Business Improvement District runs the closure every week, but a different partner builds the actual program each time. One Sunday belongs to sixty-some independent designers setting up a fashion and design market. Another belongs to a church holding a blessing of animals. Another belongs to a square dance caller from Jalopy Theatre. Treating all seven as the same recurring street fair means missing what each organization actually built for their particular week, and at least one of those weeks already got rained out once.
That happened on September 20. Brooklyn Heights Blog posted an update three days earlier warning that the FAD Market, the fashion and design edition of Open Streets, had been called off ahead of forecast rain. The vendors didn't just vanish. According to the Brooklyn Eagle, the rescheduled market folded into October 4, a date that was already carrying its own lineup: a New York Blood Center blood drive, a pet supply donation station run by The Service Collective, GTHR Yoga's Doggie Flow Yoga class, and a Blessing of the Animals at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church tied to the Feast of St. Francis. Add in Brooklyn Heights' first-ever Community Tag Sale, with forty households selling off closets and shelves in advance-only spaces, and October 4 turned into the densest single Sunday of the entire run, built out of one date's own plan plus another date's washout.
What Each Sunday Actually Builds
The season opened September 13, then lost its second Sunday to weather before the calendar started stacking up in earnest. Free walking tours from McNeil Tours run at 1 and 3 p.m. on several of the remaining dates, tracing brownstones, the Promenade, and Revolutionary War sites along the way. One Sunday later in October turns the block into something closer to a barn dance: Hopalong Andrew opens with cowboy songs, and caller Sammy Osmund leads a community square dance from 1 to 4 p.m., open to beginners with moves taught on the spot. Another Sunday belongs to the Brooklyn Heights Association's annual pickleball tournament, open to registered players and casual walk-up games alike.
The season closes October 25 with the Montague Diner Dog Costume Contest, dogs in Halloween costumes taking over the sidewalk while the Brooklyn Heights band Rogue Connections plays folk, rock, and covers from 3 to 4 p.m. Miss Piera and Le Meraviglie Art Studio run free children's art from noon to five, alongside giant street chess and oversized sidewalk games. After that Sunday, Montague reopens to cars for the winter and the block goes back to being an ordinary commercial strip until the BID brings the program back next year.
None of this is new to Brooklyn Heights. What's specific to this fall is the density of it, seven distinct events compressed into six weeks, with a rainout forcing two of them onto the same date rather than spreading the calendar thinner.
The Construction You Walk Past to Get There
Anyone approaching the market from the Court Street R train walks past a different kind of change before they ever reach the car-free blocks. At the corner of Cadman Plaza West and Montague Street, right where Montague begins, a 47-story tower called One Montague Place is under construction. Demolition finished in June and construction started in July, with completion slated for 2029, according to Brooklyn Bridge Parents. The building is planned for 90 rental apartments and 46 condominiums along with roughly 40,000 square feet of retail.
That corner sits just outside the stretch the BID closes each Sunday, which runs from Clinton to Hicks, but it's the gateway most pedestrians use to get there from Borough Hall and the subway. For the next three Octobers, whoever walks toward the Sunday market from that direction will pass an active high-rise site first. The seven-week program on Montague Street ends and restarts every year. The tower at its edge won't.
Atlantic Avenue Is Having Its Own Season
Several blocks south, Atlantic Avenue has been through a quieter but more permanent kind of turnover. Colonie closed its doors on November 30 after nearly fourteen years at 127 Atlantic Avenue, a restaurant that had topped New York Magazine's list of best Brooklyn Heights spots and built its menu around local farms. Owners Emelie Kihlström, Elise Rosenberg, and Tamer Hamawi also ran Pips next door and Hildur in DUMBO, both of which closed within weeks of each other, all three citing rising costs and dining habits that shifted after the pandemic.
By February, Confidant had moved into the old Colonie space. Owners Brendan Kelley and Daniel Grossman, both Roberta's alums, had spent two years transforming a corner of Industry City into a fine-dining room before shutting it down after only eight months, and jumped at the former Colonie address when it opened up. Confidant kept the exposed brick and the wood banquette that had run along Colonie's main wall, filled the room with family heirlooms from both owners' grandparents, and built a menu around a prawn pot pie Grossman has said pays homage to his time at Gage and Tollner. The team has plans for Lou & Bev's, an all-day bakery and pizza bar, to open next door.
A few blocks away on Hicks Street, the former home of Fatoosh Pitza & Grill has become Diljān, an Afghan bakery. A few doors down from Confidant, Empanada City was slated to open at 107 Atlantic Avenue this past summer. None of this turnover runs on the BID's calendar or ends on October 25. It's the difference between a street that reprograms itself every Sunday and an avenue that's simply filling in the storefronts left behind by a business that closed for good.
Read together, the two strands say something specific about this stretch of fall in Brooklyn Heights. Montague Street is putting on a different show every week through a single date on the calendar, then going quiet until next September. Atlantic Avenue is working through a slower, one-way changeover of who's actually running the storefronts, and whatever fills those spaces this year is likely still there next year. A resident walking both streets in the same afternoon is seeing two different kinds of change move at two different speeds, one that resets and one that doesn't.
Storefronts turn over fast on Atlantic Avenue, and towers rise slower than anyone expects at the mouth of Montague Street. The Bracha Group tracks both, because that pace shapes what it actually means to live on these blocks. Work With Us.
