A visit to Opus 40 is a rich and fulfilling experience for adults and kids. Walking around the 6½-acre sculpture creates visual change as you move from area to area, around walls and terraces which curl around trees and embrace quarry springs, set against the majestic natural backdrop of Overlook Mountain.
One can walk through, around, and over it, from the deepest recesses of its subterranean pathways (16 feet below ground) and up to the nine-ton monolith that is the epicenter and summit of the sculpture (three stories above ground).
Enjoy the Quarryman’s Museum, hiking trails, art gallery and gift shop.
You may rent Opus 40 for for a small event such as wedding ceremony and pictures (grounds will not be closed to the public), or for a wedding reception or other large event (grounds reserved for your use alone). You may reserve the grounds for the entire day (ending at sunset) or the evening.
In 1938, Harvey Fite, one of the founders of the Bard College Fine Arts Department, purchased an abandoned quarry in the town of Saugerties, NY, in Ulster County, about 100 miles north of New York City.
During a period of 37 years, he created the monumental world-acclaimed 6½-acre bluestone sculpture now known as Opus 40. Over time he acquired additional land (70+ acres today) and built several structures. Including a beautiful large wood and stone home, a studio, garage, blacksmith shop and the Quarryman’s Museum, which houses his unique collection of indigenous tools.
Constructed by this one man, using dry-key stone masonry techniques inspired by his work in restoring the Mayan civilization at Copan, refined by experiment, trial and error, Opus 40 is a labyrinthine world of finely fitted stone, swirling with ramps and terraces constructed around pools and trees and fountains, rising out of bedrock a half mile deep.
Own or work here?