This year’s Columbus Day Parade in Manhattan will feature the Seahawk Marching Band leading a Wagner College float. Come see the revived Marching Band in its first parade in decades, joined by Seahawk cheerleaders and a float filled with Wagner students — and the Seahawk mascot, too!
The parade will run up Fifth Avenue from 47th Street to 72nd Street.
You can join us in the city, or watch a live broadcast on WABC-TV this Monday, Oct. 13 from 12 to 3 p.m.
The final segment of this week's edition of WNET's Metrofocus previews Monday's Columbus Day Parade in New York City:
MetroFocus host Rafael Pi Roman talks to Columbus Citizens Foundation President Angelo Vivolo about the organization’s parade and other Columbus Day-related activities.
The New York City Columbus Day parade has been an annual tradition since 1929. The Columbus Citizens Foundation is responsible for putting on the parade every year. Billed as “the largest celebration of Christopher Columbus’s historic voyage and of Italian-American heritage and achievement in the world,” last year’s parade attracted 35,000 marchers and nearly 1 million spectators.
The parade may be the best-known Columbus Day event, but it is part of the Columbus Day celebration which also includes a gala dinner, a wreath laying at Columbus Circle and mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The celebration raises money that the foundation uses to provide over $2 million per year in scholarships to Italian-Americans.
This year’s parade takes place Monday, October 13 from 11:30 a.m. until 3 p.m. along 5th Avenue between 47th and 72nd Streets.