Cyndi Lauper belted out “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” at The Glasshouse on Friday, October 23, as New York Restoration Project's annual Hulaween gala pulled in more than $2 million for green spaces across the five boroughs. The night, themed Hulaween on Horror Reef: Monsters of the Deep, mixed celebrity costumes with a serious pitch for urban parkland, drawing the kind of star wattage that has defined Bette Midler's environmental charity for decades.
A Family Affair With a Serious Cause
According to New York Restoration Project, the gala raised critical funds to advance the organization's mission of ensuring equitable access to green space across all five boroughs. Midler, who founded the group, presented the Wind Beneath My Wings Award to trustees Sophie von Haselberg and Harry Guinness during the evening. Von Haselberg is Midler's daughter and Guinness her son-in-law, according to Off The MRKT, and per amNewYork, von Haselberg has been involved with the organization since she was eight years old.
Mario Cantone served as the evening's emcee, per amNewYork's account of the gala, and the bill of performers extended well beyond Lauper. Jessica Vosk, Sydney James Harcourt, Will Lee and the Root System all took the stage, amNewYork reports, rounding out a lineup built to keep the Halloween spirit — and the fundraising momentum — going.
Costumes, Contests and a Night That Kept Going
Isaac Mizrahi and Rachel Antonoff judged the gala's costume contest, the organization's recap notes, with Allie Provost taking the win dressed as a rainbow fish and Tripp Swanhouse earning best upcycled costume for an entry called Out of the Sea, according to amNewYork. Once the formal program wrapped, the same report notes that House of Yes and DJ Boyyyish kept the celebration going late into the night, true to Hulaween's reputation as one of the city's more theatrical philanthropic bashes.
The gala is one of the primary ways the organization funds its on-the-ground work, which the nonprofit describes as restoring shorelines and public green spaces while supporting urban agriculture, educational programming, performances and food distribution across the city, per amNewYork's reporting.
Decades of Cleanup, With a Few Numbers in Dispute
New York Restoration Project says it has removed more than six million pounds of trash since its founding, according to amNewYork, and has built or restored more than 350 public green spaces — though the organization's own 2025 annual report separately cites a figure of more than 300 built or renovated citywide, a discrepancy the available reporting does not resolve. The group also says more than 1.6 million New Yorkers now live within a ten-minute walk of one of its green spaces, per the same amNewYork account.
New York Restoration Project was founded in 1995, while Hulaween itself was founded in 1996. The group has grown into a fixture of the city's parks landscape, with its 2025 annual report also crediting the nonprofit with planting more than 200,000 trees and stewarding more than 80 acres of parkland alongside more than 50 community gardens it owns and operates.
Beyond the trash and tree counts, the organization used 2025 to push into new territory, launching what it calls the 1,000 Chestnut Challenge and opening New York City's first Chestnut Trail as part of a broader effort to restore blight-resistant American chestnuts, according to its annual report. It's the kind of niche ecological project that rarely makes headlines on its own — but fits the pattern of a gala built to fund unglamorous, long-term park work behind a very glamorous guest list.
