A Mount Vernon Street brownstone in Beacon Hill has traded its usual brick-and-shutter look for a swarm of oversized monarch butterflies, skeletons and floral arrangements spilling from its window boxes this Halloween season. The display, known locally as the Butterfly House, traces back to a simple request from 4-year-old Fallon DiLeo, who wanted her family's home to match her Halloween costume: a butterfly.
According to The Boston Globe, homeowner Mary DiLeo originally pitched a butterfly graveyard concept, but Vanessa Tropeano, creative director at Parterre Garden Services, thought that idea was too sad and reworked it into a story of butterfly migration with an undead twist. Before landing on butterflies, DiLeo and Tropeano had also kicked around a witch's tea party and a haunted dollhouse, according to the seed reporting from CBS Boston. DiLeo has said the monarchs felt right for Halloween anyway, since their orange and black coloring already fits the holiday palette.
Parterre is a landscaping company based in Billerica that specializes in garden design most of the year, then pivots into elaborate holiday installations each October, per Boston.com. The company's Halloween side business started about a decade ago after a client simply asked them to decorate a home for the holiday, and it has since grown into a seasonal specialty that now covers several Beacon Hill properties.
A Two-Day Build With a Five-Person Crew
The Mount Vernon Street installation took shape over a two-day process that began Oct. 8, Boston.com reported. CBS Boston's reporting on the project describes a five-person installation team that spent roughly 85 hours assembling the display, working around unpredictable October weather while taking care not to damage the brownstone's historic brickwork and windows.
Cory Wojcuilewicz, Parterre's urban fine gardening field manager, has said the custom-made butterflies were difficult to position because of their weight. He has also described how the display's skeletons can be posed by adjusting their fingers and jaws, allowing the crew to use gestures, lighting and positioning to build a visual narrative across the facade.
Vanessa Tropeano, who holds the title of creative director and director of fine gardening at Parterre, has said the company's installations are meant to add to Beacon Hill's long-running tradition of over-the-top Halloween decorating rather than compete with it. The neighborhood has leaned into excessive seasonal decor for decades, according to the Beacon Hill Times.
What It Costs — and Who Keeps the Decorations
Parterre handles only about 20 to 30 Halloween decorating jobs each season, but the scale of the work can get expensive. The Globe reports that installations can run upward of $25,000 at the high end, while the Beacon Hill Times' account from 2025 cited quotes ranging from $5,000 to $20,000 across five Beacon Hill houses that year — figures that reflect different years and projects rather than a single fixed price. Clients end up owning their decorations outright, and Parterre stores the pieces afterward so homeowners can reuse them the following Halloween or start fresh with a new theme.
Once the season wraps, Parterre crews will take the Mount Vernon Street display down and store it for possible reuse. Large-scale designs like it generally need to be booked about six weeks ahead of time, the Globe notes, which gives a sense of how far in advance Beacon Hill's most elaborate displays get locked in.
A Family Tradition Turned Neighborhood Draw
DiLeo's family says they were inspired to go big after seeing neighbors' decorations the previous year and wanted to offer something special back to the block. The Butterfly House has become a magnet for photos, and DiLeo has said she has taken probably a thousand pictures of it herself, including a shot of her daughters out front on school mornings. Her daughters have also taken to greeting visitors who gather outside the home.
Visitors reportedly come from across Massachusetts and beyond to see the brownstone, part of a broader pattern in which almost all of Parterre's designs tend to go viral on social media, per the Globe's reporting. DiLeo has said the memories created by the display feel priceless to her, and that she hopes it serves as a gift to the neighborhood as much as to her own family. Last year, she said, her 80 pounds of trick-or-treat candy was gone by 8 p.m.
Beacon Hill's Bigger Halloween Scene
The Butterfly House is one entry in a neighborhood full of elaborate Parterre-built themes, including an underwater scene, a spider takeover and a home styled as if infested by dragons, according to the Globe. Elsewhere on Mount Vernon Street, a Taylor Swift-themed brownstone features gold snakes representing her Reputation album, blonde wigs spanning her various eras, and tombstones for her past boyfriends plus a grave marking her relationship with Travis Kelce, as reported by CBS Boston.
Other past Beacon Hill favorites have included a Harry Potter house with dementors and cobwebs and a candy-themed display in Louisburg Square, according to the Daily Free Press. The neighborhood has been named Boston's best overall spot for viewing Halloween decorations, per Mommy Poppins, and it remains one of the city's top trick-or-treating destinations, as The Huntington News has noted. Around the city, neighborhood Spooky Streets block parties are planned on and around Halloween this year, the Boston Herald reports, alongside a Boston City Hall event featuring the BLAIR Project running from 6 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. on Halloween night.
