"No medals, just laminated dough." That's how Gautier Coiffard, co-owner of L'Appartement 4F, described what his bakery is signing up for this month. He was talking about the NYC Bakery Run, the citywide half marathon that finishes its 13.1-mile route at his Montague Street storefront. But the line captures something bigger about how Brooklyn Heights treats a closed street in September. Montague goes car-free twice this month, and if you assume both Sundays are the same flavor of neighborhood event, you will show up to the wrong one with the wrong expectations.
September 13 and September 20 both put up the barricades between Clinton and Hicks. Both draw crowds. Both get covered in the same three sentences on every local events calendar: "Open Streets returns to Montague." That framing erases the actual difference, which is that one Sunday belongs to strollers and one belongs to runners, and the businesses on the block are staffing up for two entirely different crowds.
The Sunday Built Around Nap Schedules
September 13 is the Back to School Party, organized through Brooklyn Bridge Parents and run inside the Open Streets closure from noon to 4 p.m. It covers the same two stretches, Clinton to Henry and Henry to Hicks, but the programming is built for kids ages 0 to 12: an obstacle course, arts and crafts, and building activities scattered across the car-free blocks. This is a Sunday designed to end by naptime.
The event exists because Open Streets on Montague is itself a partnership between the Montague Street Business Improvement District, the Brooklyn Heights Association, and the city's Department of Transportation, and different groups get to program the same closed street on different weekends. On September 13, the programming group is a parenting collective, and the block reads accordingly: double strollers, chalk, a line for the obstacle course rather than a line for a bakery.
The Sunday Built Around a Finish Line
Seven days later, the same two blocks close again, but this time FAD Market takes over the footprint between Clinton and Henry with more than 50 makers selling handmade jewelry, apparel, and home goods, the same rotating pop-up that has anchored Montague's Open Streets dates going back years. That part alone would make September 20 worth circling. What makes it different from a standard market Sunday is who else is arriving that day.
The NYC Bakery Run, now running its second year after debuting in 2025, sends 100 lottery-selected runners on a route that starts at La Cabra in Bushwick and threads through Radio Bakery, La Bicyclette, Librae Bakery, Raf's, Gem Home, and Elbow Bread before finishing in Brooklyn Heights at L'Appartement 4F. Coiffard's bakery has served as the race's finish line before, and the timing puts a wave of runners crossing into a market Sunday that's already drawing shoppers for the FAD pop-up. Whatever your plans for Montague Street on the 20th, you are sharing the block with both a craft fair and the tail end of a half marathon.
| September 13 | September 20 | |
|---|---|---|
| Event | Back to School Party | FAD Market + NYC Bakery Run finish |
| Organizer | Brooklyn Bridge Parents, via Open Streets | Montague BID's Open Streets, with FAD Market and Tipster's Bakery Run |
| Hours | Noon to 4 p.m. | Noon to 6 p.m. (market), runners arriving through the morning |
| Blocks closed | Clinton–Henry, Henry–Hicks | Clinton–Henry |
| Who it's for | Kids ages 0 to 12 and their parents | Shoppers, bakery regulars, and a wave of finishing runners |
What Doesn't Close Either Sunday
The businesses that make Montague worth closing to traffic in the first place don't reshuffle for either date. Din Soup Dumplings and Khaosan Thai Brooklyn keep serving through both closures. Montague Diner and Chama Mama stay open the same hours they always do. Books Are Magic has run a Merch Mart on past FAD Market Sundays without changing its regular retail footprint the rest of the week. The Brooklyn Women's Exchange, a volunteer-run shop at 137 Montague that has supported independent makers since 1854, shows up as a FAD Market participant on the market Sunday and simply operates as itself every other day of the year.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. The street fair changes character every week depending on who's programming it, but the storefronts underneath the programming are the actual neighborhood, open on the Sundays with barricades and the Sundays without them. A Back to School Party doesn't touch L'Appartement 4F's regular Sunday morning crowd any more than the Bakery Run touches whether Books Are Magic is open on a Tuesday. The two special Sundays are additions to Montague Street, not replacements for it.
Reading the Block Correctly
If you're planning a Sunday around either date, the practical difference comes down to who else will be on the sidewalk with you. September 13 means navigating a stroller-dense crowd built for young kids, with the obstacle course and craft tables eating up sidewalk space you'd normally use to get from the R train at Court Street or the 2/3/4/5 at Borough Hall straight to brunch. September 20 means a longer closure window, a market that spans one full block rather than two, and the added variable of runners arriving at L'Appartement 4F sometime in the morning, which is worth knowing if your plan involves grabbing a croissant there before noon.
Neither Sunday cancels the other's version of Montague Street. What changes is the crowd you're stepping into and the reason it's there. A neighborhood that hosts a kids' party one week and a half marathon finish line the next isn't inconsistent. It's just running two different organizations through the same physical space, and the block absorbs both without losing what makes it Montague Street the other five days a week.
If you're weighing what a block like this signals about a neighborhood's day-to-day rhythm, or you're thinking ahead to buying or selling somewhere in Brooklyn Heights, Jarrod Duncan has spent his time here paying attention to exactly this kind of detail. Let's Connect.
