Ask a longtime Harrison resident which day the parade falls on this year, and don't be surprised if they guess wrong. For as long as most people can remember, the downtown parade has owned Columbus Day itself, the actual Monday holiday, while the car show over in West Harrison came later, almost as an afterthought tacked onto the following weekend. This year the town flipped that order, and the holiday itself now belongs to the other side of Harrison.
That switch is worth understanding before the first street closes, because it changes which day you plan around and which side of town gets the crowds first.
Two Business Districts, One Municipality
Harrison isn't a single Main Street with a satellite neighborhood attached to it. Downtown, centered on Halstead Avenue, runs its own commercial strip of restaurants and shops. West Harrison, built around Lake Street and its volunteer fire department, runs a separate one. Each side has hosted its own piece of the annual "It's Great to Live in Harrison" Columbus Day tradition for decades, and the town's 2026 calendar keeps that split fully intact.
What moves from year to year is the sequence, not the split itself. The order depends entirely on where Columbus Day lands on the calendar, and this year it lands differently than it has in recent memory.
The Full Nine Days, Mapped
Here's how the Town of Harrison has laid out the 2026 stretch, according to its own published calendar:
| Date | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| October 12 (Columbus Day) | 46th "It's Great to Live in Harrison" Columbus Day Observance Car Show & Music, 10am to 4pm; Rock Steady Band & Fireworks, 7pm | West Harrison Business District; West Harrison Firehouse, 95 Lake Street |
| October 13 | Harrison Police Open House, 10am to 2pm | 650 North Street |
| October 14 | Parade, starting at Thatcher and Halstead Avenues, 10am, followed by a festival | Downtown Harrison to Ma Riis Park |
| October 18 through 20 | Harrison Players present "Stage Kiss" by Sarah Ruhl, Friday 8pm, Saturday 2pm and 8pm, Sunday 2pm | Veteran's Memorial Building, 210 Halstead Ave |
| October 19 | Pickleball Mixed Doubles Tournament, 9am | Passidomo Park |
| October 20 | 4th Annual West Harrison Italian Heritage Festival, 11:30am to 7pm | Lake Street, West Harrison |
Nine days, six distinct events, split almost evenly between the two districts. The car show alone is in its 46th year. The Italian Heritage Festival is in its fourth.
The Order Flips This Year
Go back to 2018, and the sequence ran the other way. That October, the fireworks and block party at the West Harrison Fire Department happened first, on the Saturday before the holiday. The downtown parade then took Columbus Day itself, stepping off at 10am from the same Thatcher and Halstead corner it always uses. The car show didn't happen until the following Sunday, nearly a week after the parade, almost as a coda to the week rather than its opener.
In 2026, that pattern is reversed. The car show and the fireworks now happen together, on Columbus Day itself. The downtown parade doesn't happen until two days later. The side of town that gets the actual holiday, the one with the federal date attached to it, has changed hands.
Neither side lost anything. The car show still runs its full four hours, the fireworks still light up Lake Street, the parade still starts at the same intersection and ends at the same park. What changed is which event anchors the holiday, and that's the kind of detail nobody prints on a flyer.
The Park Named After One Woman's Promise
Ma Riis Park, where the downtown parade ends every year, wasn't always called that. It was renamed in a 1989 Memorial Day ceremony to honor Genevieve Riis, a Harrison widow who had spent decades volunteering at veterans' hospitals, from Kingsbridge in the Bronx to Castle Point in Newburgh. During World War II she corresponded with hundreds of service members and mailed them care packages, and the nickname the soldiers gave her, "Ma," stuck to the park itself once the town decided to make her service permanent.
It's a small piece of civic history that most people walking through the festival crowd on October 14 have never heard, and it's part of why the downtown side of the celebration carries a different weight than the car show across town. One space is named for a person. The other is a business district that's been throwing the same car show since the late 1970s.
West Harrison Is Building Something New
The Italian Heritage Festival is the newest piece of the week, and its arrival says something about how West Harrison sees itself. A car show that's been running for 46 years doesn't need reinforcement. A festival in its fourth year does, and the fact that it keeps returning, on the same street, in the same slot the week after the main parade, suggests West Harrison is deliberately building its own calendar rather than borrowing downtown's.
Downtown, meanwhile, still carries the restaurant density. Trattoria Vivolo has anchored 301 Halstead Avenue for more than thirteen years under chef and owner Dean Vivolo. Piero's relocated to 123 Halstead Avenue after decades in Port Chester. Kyria, a newer Mediterranean spot on the same strip, has built a following on Greek-inspired seafood and valet parking. Halstead Sixty rounds out the block with an upscale take on Italian American classics. None of that competes with the West Harrison festival scene. It just means the two halves of town offer genuinely different things during the same nine days, and neither one is trying to be the other.
A Working Plan for the Week
If you're mapping out which day to show up where, a few practical notes make the week easier to navigate:
- The West Harrison Business District closes to through traffic for the car show on October 12, and Lake Street sees fireworks crowds that same evening. Parking near Silver Lake Park will be tight from midmorning on.
- Thatcher and Halstead Avenues close for the parade lineup on the morning of October 14, with Ma Riis Park absorbing the festival crowd through the afternoon.
- The Veteran's Memorial Building at 210 Halstead Ave hosts the Harrison Players' run of "Stage Kiss," not the fireworks or festival crowds, so parking there stays manageable across all three performances.
- Passidomo Park's pickleball courts and the Lake Street festival footprint sit close enough together that October 19 and 20 effectively extend West Harrison's turn at hosting the week.
None of these events require a ticket or a reservation to watch from the sidewalk. What they require is knowing which day belongs to which side of town, since assuming this year runs like the last one you remember is exactly how people end up circling for parking on the wrong street.
Harrison's two commercial districts have shared this week for decades without either one disappearing into the other. The only thing that changes is who gets top billing on the holiday itself, and this year, for the first time in recent memory, that's West Harrison.
Andrew Rogovic grew up watching both sides of this week play out, and he still keeps track of which corner closes when. If you want a straight answer about what's actually happening in Harrison this fall, before it's buried in a town PDF, reach out through RyebrookRealtor.com.
