A discarded wooden spool redirects an actor toward sculpture.
Sculptor · teacher · builder · 1903—1976
HarveyFite
One artist. Thirty-seven years. A discarded quarry transformed into an American masterwork.
6.5acres of earthwork
37years of building
9ton monolith
A life shaped by hand
He entered a ruined quarry and imagined a world.
Harvey Fite was an actor, sculptor, teacher, traveler, builder, and restless observer of how people give form to place.
At High Woods in Saugerties, his many pursuits converged. Stone by stone, the quarry became Opus 40: ramps, terraces, pools, chambers, paths, and walls moving as one continuous sculpture.
Follow the full chronologyHarvey, the person
The monument can hide the man.
Born in Pittsburgh and raised in Texas, Fite came to sculpture through theater. He taught at Bard for 36 years, studied carving in Florence, helped restore Maya monuments at Copán, raised a family at the quarry, and kept making intimate figures even as his landscape work grew to acres.
Read his life story
A daily practiceSelect · lift · fit · balance · repeat
The life’s work
Opus
40
Fite worked largely alone and without mortar, following the quarry’s geology until the setting for his sculptures became the greater sculpture.
Understand the workOpus 40 · High Woods, Saugerties
Beyond the quarry
A sculptor of bodies, motion, and character.
Stone, wood, bronze, and plaster reveal a studio practice both intimate and monumental. Every displayed detail is tied to a published record; gaps are left open rather than invented.
Explore all fourteen worksA work inseparable from place
Quarry. Mountain. Valley.
High Woods lies outside Saugerties at the foot of Overlook Mountain. The local bluestone, Catskill horizon, Hudson Valley light, and long quarrying history are not scenery around Opus 40—they are its material and measure.
Read the landscapeOpus 40High Woods
Overlook MountainCatskills
Hudson RiverValley corridor
Spatial relationship · schematic, not to scale
Harvey working on Quarry Family
Family and continuity
A legacy kept by people who lived it.
Harvey married Barbara Fairbanks Richards in 1944. Her son Tad was raised by Harvey at High Woods. After Barbara’s death, Tad and his wife Pat became Opus 40’s stewards for nearly four decades—preserving the work, building its public life, and carrying its stories forward.
This tribute is made by Harvey’s great-grandson and endorsed by the family.
See the family archiveFour turns in one life
From stage
to stone.
Fite buys the abandoned Saugerties bluestone quarry.
The nine-ton monolith rises; the whole quarry is recognized as sculpture.
The work stops after 37 years, but its stewardship begins.
Continue exploring
One life.
Many ways in.
Move from Harvey’s biography to the quarry, from the sculptures to the photographs, or follow the chronology from 1903 to the living site today.