Clingstone Mansion, Rhode Island
Clingstone, an unusual, 103-year-old mansion in Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay. The house was abandoned in the 1940’s until it was bought by Henry Wood in 1961 for $3,600.
Henry Wood, the owner, runs the house like a camp: all skilled workers welcome. The Jamestown Boatyard hauls the family’s boats and floating dock and stores them each winter in return for a week’s use of the house in the summer. Mr. Wood, a 79-year-old Boston architect, bought the house with his ex-wife Joan in 1961. It had been empty for two decades.
Clingstone had been built by a distant cousin, J.S. Lovering Wharton. Mr. Wharton worked with an artist, William Trost Richards, to create a house of picture windows with 23 rooms on three stories radiating off a vast central hall.
The house is maintained by an ingenious method: the Clingstone work weekend. Held every year around Memorial Day, it brings 70 or so friends and Clingstone lovers together to tackle jobs like washing all 65 of the windows. Anne Tait, who is married to Mr. Wood’s son Dan, refinished the kitchen floor on one of her first work weekends.
The total cost of the construction, which was completed in 1905, was $36,982.99. Today, the mansion which has 360-degree views of the bay offers a combination of grandiose opulence and rough beach house charm. The mansion itself is massive containing 23 room, including 10 bedrooms spread out over three floors.
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