Last fall, Saugerties celebrated the opening of its newest quarry-based sculpture park, Spiral House Park, a 45-acre extravaganza of eccentric beauty that flowed from the mind and hands of late artist Tom Gottsleben. At its center stands a five-story house designed on a Fibonacci curve; surrounding it are dozens of works in bluestone and crystal glass, catching the light from every direction.
Gottsleben didn’t set out to create a park—he was following his muse wherever it led him. “It was an old quarry, and he worked with a crew, going through the rubble and creating beautiful stone sculptures,” says Joshua Cohen, executive director of the park. “The house, which is the centerpiece, was originally meant to be a guesthouse. But when it was finished in 2001 Tom and his wife, Patty Livingston, who’d been living in a ranch house on the property, said ‘Wait, why aren’t we living in that?’ So they moved across the driveway.”
Gottsleben had taken his inspiration from nature and the designs of sacred geometry, and when he died in 2019, Livingston knew it should become a public space unlike any other. In early 2025, she founded a nonprofit and turned the property over to a group of committed people who spent months devising trails and infrastructure, getting the property ready for company.
A launch party was held in November. This April, Cohen looks forward to welcoming the public to explore and enjoy Gottsleben’s masterwork, which lends itself quite naturally to celebrations of all sorts. “There was a lot of joy in his process, and you can feel it in the way the vivid colors of the crystal glass catch the light, in the curves of the stone,” says Cohen. “Then you have these phenomenal sweeping Catskills views. Our mission is multifaceted: we want it to be a sanctuary where people can find moments of quiet contemplation and also a setting for nature and art-focused workshops and a few larger-format events a year. It’s all about art and nature and their power to transform the way we see and care for the earth. Tom and Patty’s lifestyle was always considered and conscious, and that spirit informs everything we’ve done here and everything we plan to do.”
Connective Tissue
It’s a natural fit for the Saugerties community, where caring—for the planet, for the people, for the pets—is a uniting passion. Pat Praetorious, the Kiwanis Club member who keeps the iconic Garlic Festival organized, says she’s not sure how many of the 40,000 guests who showed up to celebrate the “stinking rose” last fall realize that the party is run by the Kiwanis—all 32 or so of them—for over three decades. They do a careful job: every vendor of food or crafts is required to have a garlic connection, and handmade items are given priority.
“It’s gotten kinda crazy as the word has spread,” she says. “We pay the town crew to handle the parking, and then we do get help from the Elks and the Lions. And then there’s the zero-waste aspect of it, which we’re very proud of, that takes a lot of people too. We couldn’t do it with just 32 of us. Thankfully, we get a couple of hundred people showing up to help us out on the big day.”
It’s the Kiwanis Club’s only fundraiser, and they make sure the proceeds do lots of work. The Boys and Girls Club, every local food pantry (and one in neighboring Kingston), and the school-based Backpack Program all benefit, as do the club’s service programs for youth, the Builders’ Club, and the Key Club. The Kiwanis decorate the town for the holidays and help with the Fourth of July fireworks. “You read so much about teaching empathy to schoolchildren, but I really think direct experience is the way to go,” says Praetorious. “We support the veterans and the Hope Rocks recovery program, we pay for summer camp for kids, and mentor them through high school and on into SUNY Ulster. We do little beautification projects that don’t quite fit into either village or town public works. My hope is that some of the newer folks in town come to recognize not just how important this all is, but how satisfying it feels to be part of it—we’d love to get some new members.”
Gone to the Dogs
Peggy Schwartz, past president and active member of the Saugerties Chamber of Commerce and owner of Town and Country Liquors, says the chamber is bustling with new members and strikingly diverse. “We have a lot of longevity, a lot of places that have existed for decades, and then we have brand new places popping up all the time. We have great venues and hotels, all sorts of eating and drinking places, and so much art. We have incredibly eclectic retail—high end boutiques to thrift shops, a fantastic bookstore and shoe store, the Orpheum Theatre. Our core institutions—the library, the senior center—are just fantastic. And I feel like we have good leadership. When things get contentious, I trust them to do their due diligence and make sure people’s voices are heard and that we get the information we need to make good decisions.”
She’s not kidding about the diversity. You can find everything in Saugerties, from what she calls the “beautiful beating heart” of the village to the useful and delicious surrounding town. Saugerties offers puppetry and aura photography, ice skating and beaches, puppetry and poetry and a “best-in-class solution provider for molecular delivery” alongside a host of thriving tradesfolk of all stripes. The Chamber’s own signature fundraiser, a street art project, will focus on dogs this year and benefit the Saugerties Animal Shelter.
And last October, the theme of the group’s monthly mixer was a celebration of the large number of women-owned businesses in town. “It just dawned on us how many businesses in the village and town are owned and managed by women, an amazing amount, and we decided that was something to recognize and celebrate. And so many people came out!”
Breaking Ground
Some 40 community leaders, supporters, and partners gathered last November at Jeffery Court for the land dedication ceremony of Hope Springs Development, Ulster County Habitat for Humanity’s 10-home community, the first woods-to-cul-de-sac development by any Habitat affiliate in New York State, which will house families earning 50 to 70 percent of the area median income. Ground was broken for the first of the homes last month. “When you build a single home on an existing street, you’re adding one family to an established community.” says Christine Brady LaValle, executive director of Ulster Habitat. “When you build a neighborhood, you’re creating community from the ground up, 10 families who’ll be invested neighbors from day one, children who’ll grow up together, a shared stake in maintaining and improving their surroundings. The ripple effects include new tax revenue for Saugerties, revitalization of an underutilized area, and proof that working families can afford to stay in Ulster County.”
Unlike larger proposals such as the Winston Farm project, a proposed mixed-use project on 840 acres that’s gone through multiple iterations and attracted passionate intensity both for and against, Habitat’s plan has been warmly embraced. “We are currently building in Saugerties and Port Ewen, and both municipalities have been supportive,” says LaValle. “The housing crisis is real and visible. Local leaders recognize that working families need solutions, not roadblocks.” Just last month, Habitat celebrated the dedication of its ninth house in another part of Saugerties, Glasco Ponds.
An Epic Spring
Isabel Soffer and Danny Melnick have been running The Local in a renovated church on John Street since 2023, leveraging 30 years of high-level experience and network-building in music and entertainment, and Soffer says it just keeps getting better. “We just started a whole new series called Local Waves, focused on local musicians, and there are so many great ones,” she says. “We’ve also had fascinating conversations—a neuroscientist on the biology of addiction; the renowned relationship therapist, Esther Perel; an astronomer talking about the solar eclipse. This March, we have world-class jazz group Artemis on the 12th—it’s their first time in the Hudson Valley. Then we have Toshi Reagan and Big Lovely coming on April 3. Later in April, we’ll have two days of Mystical Arts of Tibet, a group of monks endorsed by the Dalai Lama who’re experts in ancient ritual and healing. So those are just three of the 30 to 35 things we have going on between now and June. It’s going to be epic, all of it, from the shows to the mingling.”
Epic is an apt description of much that goes on in Saugerties, and has been for decades. This is a town that welcomed the high-end horsefolk of HITS and the mud-mosh of Woodstock ‘94 with equal aplomb, whilst not neglecting to get together for a sunset concert or puppet show by the river of a summer’s eve.
“This is just a wonderful community, and we recognize that and stick up for one another,” says Schwartz, “both financially and emotionally. We’re thriving, we’re eclectic, we’re interesting, and we’re interested—most of all, we’re interested in each other’s well-being.”
This article appears in March 2026.
