Twenty-five years have passed since September 11, 2001. A quarter of a century is long enough for children to become adults, skylines to change and a new generation to know that morning only through photographs, recordings and the stories of those who were there. Yet in New York, there are some absences time does not erase.

On Friday, September 11, Bryant Park and Bank of America will commemorate the 25th anniversary of the attacks with a day of remembrance, beginning with an extraordinary installation across the park’s lawn: 2,753 empty chairs, each representing a life lost at the World Trade Center. The chairs will face south.

It is a simple gesture, and that simplicity may be what makes it so powerful. Rather than attempting to recreate the horror of that morning, the installation represents what remained afterward: the empty chair at the dinner table, the missing person at the birthday party, the parent who never came home, the colleague whose desk remained vacant. Multiply that absence by 2,753 and suddenly a statistic becomes human again.

From 8 a.m. until 4 p.m., visitors will be invited to write a note of remembrance and place a carnation, provided by Bank of America, on one of the chairs. For the first 3,000 carnations placed by the public, Bank of America will donate $25 per flower, with the funds divided among the NYC Police Foundation, FDNY Foundation and Port Authority PBA Widows’ and Children’s Fund.

The remembrance continues that evening when the American Symphony Orchestra takes over the Bryant Park lawn from 7 to 8:15 p.m. for a free memorial concert as part of Bryant Park’s Picnic Performances.

The program could hardly begin with a more appropriate American voice. Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man was written not for kings, presidents or generals, but in honor of ordinary people asked to meet extraordinary times. On September 11, 2001, New York discovered just how extraordinary ordinary people could be.

The concert will also include the Adagio from Gustav Mahler’s Tenth Symphony and George Walker’s Lyric for Strings, along with additional works honoring the resilience of Americans and the courage and sacrifice of those who responded on September 11.

Founded by Leopold Stokowski in 1962, the American Symphony Orchestra has spent more than six decades bringing orchestral music to wider audiences, making its presence here particularly fitting. There will be no tickets and no velvet ropes. New Yorkers can simply bring a blanket, sit on the lawn and listen. For those unable to attend, the concert will also be livestreamed.

There is something particularly poignant about holding this remembrance in Bryant Park. This is not a cemetery or a memorial site. It is one of the most alive places in Manhattan, surrounded by offices, restaurants, tourists, commuters, children, music and the relentless movement of New York City. Life will continue all around those empty chairs. That, too, is part of September 11’s legacy.

New York did not forget its dead in order to continue living. It continued living because they could not.

Twenty-five years later, 2,753 empty chairs will face south across Bryant Park. For one day, in the middle of a city that rarely stops moving, we will be asked to notice who is missing.

New York Fashion Week has always been as much about what happens between the shows as what happens on the runway. This September, one of those moments will smell remarkably like fall.

On September 14 beginning at 10 a.m., NEST New York will take over Chelsea Triangle in the Meatpacking District with a complimentary Cardamom Latte café, turning the launch of its new Cardamom Latte Eau de Parfum into something New Yorkers can both wear and drink.

The concept is wonderfully simple: take the notes of a fragrance and put them into a cup. Visitors can stop by for a free fall-inspired cardamom latte while experiencing the scent that inspired it, transforming what would ordinarily be a perfume launch into a small sensory playground in the middle of Fashion Week.

Cardamom Latte was practically made for September in New York. The fragrance combines cardamom with jasmine petals, coconut milk and vanilla cream, moving between spice, floral notes and something warm and deliciously comforting. It is fragrance borrowing from café culture, then café culture returning the favor.

There is also something distinctly New York about launching it in the Meatpacking District during Fashion Week. For years, the neighborhood has been one of the places where fashion, beauty, nightlife, food and street culture continually collide. A perfume-inspired coffee shop appearing for a day in Chelsea Triangle feels considerably more interesting than another fragrance bottle sitting beneath perfect lighting at a traditional launch party.

It also taps into the increasingly blurred line between beauty and experience. We no longer simply want to smell the perfume or see the dress. We want to enter its world. Here, scent becomes taste, a perfume counter becomes a café, and discovering a new fragrance becomes part of wandering through New York during one of its most stylish weeks.

The pop-up is also conveniently located just steps from Sephora, where the Sephora-exclusive Cardamom Latte Eau de Parfum can be purchased after visitors have had their first smell—and their first sip.

NEST New York’s Cardamom Latte Café takes place September 14 beginning at 10 a.m. at Chelsea Triangle in the Meatpacking District. The lattes are complimentary.

Fashion Week may be concerned with what New York is going to wear next, but for one morning, it will also be concerned with how New York smells—and apparently, how it takes its coffee.

Broadway will go dark for a moment on Tuesday, September 8 at 6:45 p.m., when the marquees of all 41 Broadway theatres dim simultaneously in memory of 13 artists and industry figures whose work helped shape the theatre—and, in several cases, American culture far beyond it.

The September Broadway in Memoriam tribute will honor Tim Curry, Clive Davis, Gina Ferrall, Josh Grisetti, Jeff Hamlin, Glen Hansard, Louise Lasser, Anna Louizos, Seth Marquette, Dolly Parton, Anne Russell, James Walsh and Harold Wheeler.

There is something particularly moving about the Broadway tradition of dimming the lights. Theatre is built on illumination—the marquee, the footlights, the spotlight—and so Broadway marks loss by taking that light away. For a few moments, Times Square becomes noticeably darker, acknowledging that someone who contributed to its brilliance is no longer here.

This September’s list crosses nearly every corner of the industry. Tim Curry, forever associated with his indelible Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, was also a three-time Tony Award nominee whose Broadway career included Amadeus, My Favorite Year and Spamalot. Dolly Parton, whose songs, personality and unmistakable generosity made her one of America’s most beloved entertainers, also left her mark on Broadway through 9 to 5: The Musical and the theatrical projects that followed.

Clive Davis, Nancy Pelosi

Clive Davis, one of the towering figures of the recording industry, spent decades influencing the music that ultimately found its way onto stages as well as records. Glen Hansard, whose music helped give Once its singular heartbeat, became part of Broadway history when the intimate musical defied conventional Broadway expectations and captured the 2012 Tony Award for Best Musical.

Broadway will also remember the extraordinary orchestrator, composer, conductor and musical director Harold Wheeler, whose career stretched across decades and included work on The Wiz, Dreamgirls, The Full Monty, Hairspray and countless other productions. Wheeler’s contribution was often the kind audiences feel without necessarily knowing whose hand created it—the musical architecture beneath some of Broadway’s most memorable nights.

Anna Louizos and Ken Billington in The Producers Exhibit Photo credit Rebecca J Michelson

Theatre designer Anna Louizos gave physical form to stories through a career that included scenic and costume work and multiple Tony nominations.

Louise Lasser Photo Magda Katz

Louise Lasser, best known to much of America through television and film, also had roots on the New York stage. Gina Ferrall, Jeff Hamlin, Seth Marquette, Anne Russell and James Walsh will likewise be remembered for lives and careers connected to the Broadway community.

Josh Grisetti

For T2C, the inclusion of Josh Grisetti carries particular weight. Grisetti, who died at only 44, possessed the kind of talent that made an audience look twice: an actor with comic precision, musical intelligence and an individuality that could not be manufactured. His work ranged from the stage to television and film, but those who saw him in the theatre understood exactly what Broadway has lost.

The September ceremony is part of the relatively new Broadway in Memoriam initiative, established last year to create a more consistent and inclusive way of honoring members of the theatrical community. Rather than allowing recognition to depend upon sporadic individual marquee dimmings, the quarterly tradition gathers multiple members of the Broadway family into a shared remembrance.

The ceremony now takes place four times annually, on the second Tuesday of September, December, March and June, with all 41 Broadway theatres participating simultaneously. The committee can also designate a separate dimming for an individual whose contribution to Broadway is considered profoundly significant.

Members of the Broadway community may submit creative professionals who have worked on Broadway, as well as career professionals who devoted their lives to the industry, for future consideration. The next submission deadline is November 17, for the December 8, 2026 dimming. Information and submissions are available through Broadway in Memoriam.

Broadway is an unusual place. Shows disappear. Sets are struck. Costumes are packed away. Dressing rooms are emptied and another name eventually goes above the theatre door. An industry devoted to creating moments that vanish every night has always had a complicated relationship with permanence.

That is why September 8 matters.

At 6:45 p.m., Broadway will briefly extinguish the lights that ordinarily announce who is playing, what is opening and what audiences should see next.

For that moment, the darkness will say something else entirely:

We remember who was here.

New York alchemy is when you take world-class athletes, remove their actual sport, hand them a wooden paddle and set the whole affair sixteen floors above a park stuffed full of people. That was Thursday, August 27th, at Branch (Park Terrace Hotel’s private aerie of a club) for “Game. Set. SPIN.,” the annual pre-Open bacchanal that trades center court for a ping pong table and feels like an upgrade.

Tennis stars Belinda Bencic, Tomas Etcheverry, Martin Damm, and Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard attended “Game. Set. SPIN.,” Credit: Gabi Porter for Park Terrace Hotel/Branch

The premise, care of a partnership with SPIN (the original ping pong social club, and they will tell you so, charmingly, at every opportunity), was simple: get some of the game’s most photogenic talent— Belinda Bencic, Tomas Etcheverry, Martin Damm, and Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard among them, to set down their racquets and pick up paddles for a winning evening of whimsy.

Credit: Gabi Porter for Park Terrace Hotel/Branch

Presiding over the proceedings in bright yellow and orange, like a beloved and extremely energetic crossing guard, was Kazuyuki Yokoyama — whose antics anchored the evening the way a lighthouse anchors a coastline, if the lighthouse was serving sizzling shots. The result was genial chaos, with guests lining up for the privilege of getting soundly, cheerfully defeated by a professional athlete on their night off.

Credit: Gabi Porter for Park Terrace Hotel/Branch

Branch, for its part, did not skimp. Smoked salmon bagels and grilled pastrami sandwiches made their case for New York’s culinary supremacy while a crudité assemblage of genuine architectural ambition held court nearby. Somewhere in the middle of it all sat a bright green tennis-court-shaped cake, which is the kind of detail that sounds like a press release exaggeration until you’re standing in front of it wondering whether it would be gauche to ask for a slice shaped like the service box.

A US Open celebration at Branch, the private members’ club at Park Terrace Hotel, for friendly paddle games with guests on Thursday, August 27, 2026

The cocktails, meanwhile, arrived via a self-service device stationed at two points in the lounge — a small but telling bit of futurism that kept the overflow from the bar moving and the crowd lubricated with what tasted, unmistakably, like the last good week of summer. Whether that’s the bartender’s doing or just late summer doing what late summer does at altitude over Bryant Park is a question better left to the poets.

Credit: Gabi Porter for Park Terrace Hotel/Branch

It’s an annual affair now, this warmup act for Park Terrace’s “Taste of Tennis” experience — the hotel’s full US Open indulgence of luxury rooms, player access and VIP everything — and if Thursday was any indication, the tournament itself has some very tall tennis shoes to fill.