On the Rocks...

Isn't this house amazingly interesting. I received an email today with images of the home and the information included. Although it seems to be all over Google and blogged before, this is the first time I have seen it. I would be happy and willing to do a work weekend here! Has anyone seen it in person, or better yet, visited?

Clingstone, an unusual, 103-year-old mansion in Rhode Island 's Narragansett Bay survives through the love and hard work of family and friends. 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 for $3,600. 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 total cost of the construction, which was completed in 1905, was $36,982.99. Many of the historic photos he has were provided by the company that insured the house for its original owners. 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.