The Dyker Heights Christmas Lights Route
The display has no entrance, no centre and no map at the gate, because there is no gate. It is about a dozen residential blocks with roughly eighty decorated houses spread unevenly across them, and the difference between a good hour and a disappointing one is almost entirely which streets you walk and in what order.
Where the display actually is
The core sits between 83rd and 86th Streets and 11th to 13th Avenues, in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn 11228. The best-known houses run along 84th Street between 11th and 12th Avenues, which is where the tradition started in 1986 and where it is still thickest.
Sources disagree slightly on the northern edge. One Brooklyn guide puts the fan-favourite stretch at 81st to 84th Streets across 10th to 13th Avenues; another gives 83rd to 86th. Both are right, in the sense that the decorated blocks spill outward and the density falls off gradually rather than stopping at a line. Treat it as a spread with a bright middle.
Five stretches. The first two carry most of what you came for.
| Block | What is on it | Roughly how long |
|---|---|---|
| 84th St, 11th to 12th Ave | The oldest and densest stretch, including the houses people photograph most | 20–25 minutes |
| 83rd St, 11th to 12th Ave | Large front gardens, animated figures, a second cluster nearly as good | 15 minutes |
| 12th Ave, 83rd to 86th St | The connecting avenue, decorated in patches, and where the food trucks park | 10 minutes |
| 85th and 86th Sts, 11th to 13th Ave | Quieter, fewer displays, noticeably fewer people | 10–15 minutes |
| Bay Ridge, west of 11th Ave | A separate, smaller set of decorated streets that two of the tours include | 20 minutes |
The four blocks that carry most of it
If you only remember one thing, remember 84th Street between 11th and 12th Avenues. Guides on the coach tours take their groups to two streets in particular and then let people wander, and this is always one of them. 83rd Street a block north is the other.
The two avenues that cross them, 11th and 12th, carry enough to be worth walking rather than cutting through. Everything beyond that is thinner, and on a crowded night thinner is not a bad thing.
A walking loop that takes about an hour
- Start at 84th Street and 11th Avenue. Walk east along 84th, slowly. This is the stretch.
- Turn north up 12th Avenue. One block, past the food trucks.
- Walk west along 83rd Street. The second cluster, and usually less crowded than 84th.
- Turn south down 11th Avenue back to where you started, or carry on to 85th if you have time.
- Add 86th Street if you are walking to the R train anyway — it is on your way.
That is a little under a mile with stops, and it is why every operator allocates exactly an hour. Walk it in the other direction if the pavement is jammed; nothing about it is one-way.
The houses people come for
1152 84th Street — the Spata house, where the whole thing began
in 1986. Lucy Spata decorated it in memory of her mother, and the angels she puts up each
year are for her.
1145 84th Street — the Polizzotto house, one of the largest displays
on the block, which has run a charity donation box for years.
1135 84th Street — the Saitta House, a Queen Anne of 1899 on the
National Register of Historic Places, standing in the middle of all this.
71st Street at 14th Avenue — well outside the core, and locally
famous for a display running to something like 300,000 lights.
These are private homes with people living in them. Photograph the display from the pavement, stay off the paths, and keep the noise down after nine. More on how the street came to look like this on the history page.
The hill, and why your legs notice it
Dyker Heights is named for a hill and it has one. The neighbourhood rises from about fifty feet to a hundred and ten, and the high ground is around Eleventh Avenue and 82nd Street — which is to say, right where you are walking. It is a gentle gradient rather than a climb, but you will feel it after forty minutes in the cold.
The pavements are ordinary residential ones: level enough for a pushchair, uneven enough that reviewers with knee trouble mention it. There is nowhere to sit down anywhere on the route. What the walking involves goes into it properly.
Where the crowds actually go
Almost all of them go to the same two blocks, which is worth knowing because the fix is simple. Weekend evenings in mid-December put several coach groups on 84th Street at the same time, and the pavement narrows to single file in front of the biggest displays.
Walk the loop backwards. Start on 83rd Street while everyone else is queuing on 84th, and take 84th on the way out when the first wave has moved on. The quieter edges — 85th, 86th and the blocks west of 11th Avenue — carry fewer displays and far fewer people, and on a Saturday that trade is often worth making.
If you only have half an hour
Walk 84th Street between 11th and 12th, then turn up to 83rd and walk back. That is about thirty minutes and it covers the two best blocks with nothing wasted. You will miss the quieter edges, and on a Saturday in mid-December you may not mind.
If you are on a coach, this is more or less what the guided portion does before you are let loose. The three private vehicles handle it differently: they can drive the streets, so half an hour in a warm car covers ground an hour on foot would not.
Frequently asked questions
Where exactly are the Dyker Heights Christmas Lights?
In Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, roughly between 83rd and 86th Streets and 11th to 13th Avenues. Some guides put the northern edge as far up as 81st Street and the decorated blocks do spill beyond the core, so it is a spread rather than a boundary. The route page walks it block by block.
Which streets have the best displays?
84th Street between 11th and 12th Avenues is where the tradition started and where the best-known houses still are. 83rd Street and the avenues either side of it carry most of the rest. Guides on the coach tours take their groups to two streets in particular and then let people wander.
How did the tradition start?
One house, in 1986. Lucy Spata began decorating her home on 84th Street in memory of her mother, who had loved Christmas, and her neighbours followed. The full story is on the history page.
How many houses take part?
Nobody publishes a reliable figure, and the ones circulating online have no source behind them. What is documented is that the core is a few blocks deep, that displays are now installed by professional decorating firms, and that a full house costs several thousand dollars a season.
Somebody who knows the blocks
The guided departures walk their groups to the best two streets first, which is the part that is hard to get right on your own.
Know the route and still deciding how to arrive? Getting there compares the four ways in, and a Dyker Heights walking tour covers the whole evening. Every departure is on Dyker Heights Christmas Lights Tours.
Tours that walk these blocks with you
Dyker Heights Holiday Lights Tour Christmas Magic in NYC
Licensed guideCoach travelMax 55
From $75 per person
Private Dyker Heights Christmas Lights Tour
Private groupPickup includedLicensed guide
From $399 per person