Behind the River to River Festival, the Alliance’s Post-9/11 Gift to Downtown

It’s our 30th anniversary, and we’re self-celebrating. Over the next few months, we’ll be rolling out 30 stories about 30 of our biggest accomplishments, including everything from our daily public safety and sanitation work, to our small business outreach, to how we helped the neighborhood navigate challenges and even tragedies. You’ll be able to find these stories on our website, as well as in our weekly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here. 

After the September 11 attacks, we created the celebrated River to River Festival, where the combined efforts of many Lower Manhattan groups, including American Express (which provided considerable financial support), the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Arts Brookfield and the Battery Park City Authority, helped the neighborhood to heal. We held our first festival in 2002, with performances by hundreds of artists — including Sheryl Crow and Randy Newman — across 20 locations in Lower Manhattan. The festival was a hit, drawing over a million people to the neighborhood, and for over a decade we returned year after year with big names and bold performances from the likes of James Brown, Belle and Sebastian, Fountains of Wayne (pictured above) and more. The festival was also a financial boon for downtown, bringing an estimated $32 million in revenue to Lower Manhattan in 2003 alone. 

Now run by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), the still-annual River to River festival continues to bring performances and artistic experiences to hundreds of thousands of audience members. The festival comprises music, video, dancing, live performance, interactive art installations, participatory experiences and more — and it’s free to attend!