Popular Steuben Parade Returning To UES After Virtual Year

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — For the first time in two years, costumed revelers will dance and march up Fifth Avenue this weekend for the German-American Steuben Parad, which is making a grand return after a pandemic year off.

The annual parade will begin Saturday with a 9 a.m. mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, followed by a noon parade kickoff at Fifth Avenue and East 68th Street. A dozen floats will proceed up the avenue before finishing on East 86th Street — the thoroughfare once known as the "German Boulevard" for its proliferation of German shops and biergartens.

Tickets to the Fith Avenue grandstand can be purchased online. Upper East Siders can also catch a glimpse from other vantages— the Metropolitan Museum steps, perhaps — as the colorful crowd marches uptown. (It will also be streamed on the parade's website.)

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The parade coincides with Van Steuben Day, a holiday honoring the Baron Friedrich von Steuben, who came to the U.S. during the Revolutionary War to work for General George Washington. The parade was founded in 1957 in Ridgewood, Queens, and moved the following year to Yorkville, which was then a German-American stronghold.

Though past years' parades have sometimes concluded with an Oktoberfest in Central Park, COVID-19 restrictions make that impossible this year. Instead, organizers ask attendees to celebrate at local restaurants.

Overseas participants from nations including Germany, Austria and Switzerland, who typically fly in for the parade, will likewise be unable to attend, but 12 local groups will still man their own floats, ranging from Hofbrau Bierhaus NYC to the German consulate general.

Learn more at the Steuben Parade website.