Parade Eve in the Flatiron: Broadway Closes for Staging Wednesday, the Wreath Goes Down at 10:55, and Fifth Avenue Empties by Noon
Before the first unit steps off at 12:30 Wednesday, the neighborhood around Madison Square Park becomes the parade's backstage. Tuesday is the last ordinary morning it gets.
The parade's footprint is bigger than its route. The Madison Square Park Conservancy's parade page lays out Wednesday's staging map: Broadway from 25th to 29th Street and the Flatiron North Plaza will be closed for parade staging and operations, while the route itself takes Fifth Avenue from 25th Street to 47th. More than 280 marching units and 25 floats, per the parade reporting read this run, have to form up somewhere — and that somewhere is the Flatiron, starting hours before the 12:30 p.m. step-off.
The day's first closure is a ceremony, not a march. Proceedings begin with the wreath-laying at the Eternal Light Flagstaff, across from Madison Square Park, from approximately 10:55 to 11:45 a.m. — the moment of silence at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, observed where the city has observed it for a century. The parade follows at 12:30 and runs until about 3:30 p.m., with streets along the route closed at the discretion of the NYPD.
Two wider facts frame the morning. The NYC DOT's special event construction embargo, in force from November 8 through November 11, has already limited roadwork around the events — which is part of why Tuesday's Midtown still moves normally. And the same DOT weekly advisory lists a second Wednesday closure downtown: Broadway between Liberty Street and Battery Place, for a Veterans Day Festival. For Tuesday's drivers, none of this bites yet. For Wednesday's, the advice from every file read this run is the same: the subway runs under all of it, and Fifth Avenue belongs to the parade.
