The Great Pumpkin Parade returns to the Rotch-Jones-Duff House & Garden Museum on Thursday, October 8, from 4 to 8 p.m. The museum lawn at 396 County Street fills with jack-o’-lanterns carved by people who live here.
What is the Pumpkin Parade?
The Rotch-Jones-Duff House & Garden Museum hosts the Great Pumpkin Parade as an evening display of jack-o’-lanterns carved by community members. The pumpkins aren’t shipped in or done by a decorator. People who live around here carve them and drop them off.
The house itself is worth the walk up County Street. Built in 1834 and designed by Richard Upjohn, it’s a National Historic Landmark that occupies an entire city block, with an acre of gardens around it.
Lawn games, puppets, and prizes
There are lawn games out in the garden. Inside the mansion, kids can work through a scavenger hunt with prizes. The Toe Jam Puppet Band performs at 5:30 p.m.
Four hours is a generous window, so there’s no real wrong time to turn up. The one fixed point is that 5:30 puppet show, so if that’s the draw for your kids, don’t drift in at seven.
What does admission cost?
There’s no fixed admission price. The museum suggests $5 per person or $10 for a family. The RJD is a nonprofit, and the suggested donation helps support its programming and grounds.
Want to carve a pumpkin?
The museum is actively looking for carvers this year. You bring your own pumpkin, carve it however you want, and deliver the finished piece to the museum by noon on October 8. To sign up, email Lauren Pothier at [email protected].
If you’ve got kids who like a project, this is a low-stakes way to get something of theirs on display at a historic house museum.
It’s also an AHA! Night
The Pumpkin Parade is part of AHA!, which stands for Art, History, Architecture. It’s New Bedford’s free arts and culture night, held on the second Thursday of the month, February through December, since July 1999. More than 60 museums, galleries, and venues participate.
So October 8 isn’t only pumpkins. Other AHA! partners run their own programming the same evening, and it’s worth checking the listings before you head out. AHA! itself is free, and the museum’s suggested donation applies only to its own event.
See you on County Street
The Pumpkin Parade is one of the easier fall nights to take a family to in New Bedford. It’s outdoors, it’s cheap, it runs long enough that you can’t really be late, and the setting is better than most.
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