Opus 40: one man, thirty-seven years, six acres of bluestone

Some of the best things near the house are quiet and a little strange. Opus 40 is the strangest, and one of the best — six and a half acres of finely fitted bluestone, hand-built by one man, in a reclaimed quarry a short drive from the village.

The story

Harvey Fite was a sculptor and a Bard College professor. He bought an old bluestone quarry meaning to use it as a setting for his carved figures — and over time the setting quietly became the work itself. Fitting stone to stone in the dry-keyed method the old Catskills quarrymen used, with no mortar, he built a sweeping environment of ramps, terraces, and pools, crowned by a nine-ton monolith he raised by hand. He named it Opus 40 for the forty years he thought it would take. He died in 1976, thirty-seven years in, just before it was finished. It was added to the National Register in 2001.

Going

You don’t look at Opus 40 so much as move through it — paths rise and fold, and you keep arriving at vantage points you didn’t see coming. The on-site Quarryman’s Museum holds the hand tools of the trade. It’s about thirteen minutes from the house.

Come in the last hour before close, when the low sun rakes across the stone and the whole place goes gold.

Good to know

• Season: open seasonally — roughly late spring through October, on select days. Check current hours before you go.
• Footing: uneven, often sloped stone with open edges and water. Flat, grippy shoes; mind small children near the pools.
• Events: the site hosts concerts through the summer — a remarkable place to hear music at dusk.

Where: 50 Fite Road, Saugerties