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Help Wanted at the House on the Rock

Clingstone’s million-dollar views come with a price. Roll up your sleeves and grab a hammer for the annual work weekend.

Photography by Jared Leeds

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Henry Wood looks the part of a tenured professor. With a shock of white hair and pens tucked into the pocket of his worn button-down, he presides over the spreadsheets splayed on the dining room table. The mother of all home improvement to-do lists, it’s eight pages, typed, single-spaced.

His crew this weekend is all-volunteer — family, friends, friends of friends, a curiosity seeker or two who have made the late May pilgrimage to Clingstone for the annual work party. Three hundred were invited; between seventy and eighty will show. “Have you ever wanted to learn how to router, but don’t want to do it on your own house?” one invite entices. But for many, just the chance to spend the weekend here is enough. Of the thousands who have sailed past or ogled the house from the bridge on their way to Newport, few will ever set foot inside. 

Henry, a retired Boston architect — and the eighty-year-old family patriarch — seems unfazed by the 250 projects that need to be struck, one by one, from the list. He’s used to it, having owned the legendary “house on the rocks,” just outside Newport Harbor, since 1961. He’s hosted forty-plus barn-raising-style work weekends, the later efforts also spearheaded by his three grown sons, Josh, Paul and Dan. The man-hour tally is already north of 12,000. And, realistically speaking, they won’t even touch hammer to nail on one-tenth of the list this weekend.

Dan Wood, Henry’s youngest son and a Providence artist and printer, says people have three perceptions of Clingstone: “1. They feel like they’re at the Breakers, even if there’s sawdust around. 2. They see it for all the work that it is and couldn’t even enjoy it; they’re in the ‘Man, this must be a money pit!’ camp. 3. Then there are those who fall somewhere in between.”

Though the cool factor never fades, visions of gilded grandeur float away before the work skiff leaves the dock. It only takes five minutes or so to get to Clingstone, but there’s an other worldly quality that makes Castle Hill Inn, the mega yachts docked in town and the posh Jamestown shoreline — all visible — seem totally foreign. The Woods embrace the discrepancy and they have no intentions of spit-shining (or, god forbid, granite-countering) their quirky piece of paradise. “When I first bought it, the house was empty; no doors, no windows,” says Henry. He paid $3,600 for the 10,000-square-foot vandalized perch, built in 1905 as an act of defiance by a Philadelphia industrialist whose summer house was seized by eminent domain. “This isn’t a millionaire rebuilding an old house. We’re ordinary people doing it ourselves.”

Perfection is not the aim. Their approach is practical: “What I do out here is the fifty-feet rule,” says cousin Rod Smith. “Stand back and if it looks good at fifty feet you’re good.” But it is also undeniably eccentric: Why drag the five discarded toilets to shore when they have a sculpture-like aesthetic perfect for the outdoor front steps? Maybe the toilets complement the huge “No Bush” sign that’s hung since the ’04 election. The advent of the Obama administration — and the risk of appearing politically passe — made removing the wind-worn banner priority number one for work weekend 2010.

As people arrive, they sign in with Henry and choose a chore. Some volunteers — Nick DePace runs Ad Hoc/Architecture in Providence, and Bro Dunn’s a wooden boat restorer — happen to have valuable expertise, so they’re gently pushed in certain directions. The former may be plucked to consult with the team charged with repairing a major structural beam, while the latter will patch a dangerously rotted section of decking that surrounds the house; powder post beetles and water damage have eaten away the subflooring.

Those without carpentry cred gravitate toward tasks like scraping, painting and cleaning, steering clear of anything related to electricity or the five composting toilets. The killer view of the Newport bridge coupled with the early spring sun lures Rod to the south deck, putty knife and olive green paint in hand. The trim is weathered and buckled, even a little rotted, but his fifty-feet rule allows even the  novices that join him their Norm Abram moments. Lisa McLeod is diligently working her way around the property, washing all sixty-five windows; she’s armed with a pail and a squeegie. “I’m not counting as I go,” she says. “I’m just going.” Henry wanders the perimeter, offering advice, often pointing out something else that needs to get done.

Nearby Phoebe Dunn tackles a weed-filled container garden. There are a dozen or so chores that fall under “Leaves, Land and Dirt” on the spreadsheet. She used to own Phoebe’s Restaurant in Seekonk, and is here because her daughter, Jen, is married to Josh. She hitches a ride to shore with Dan and crew, who are charged with the herculean task of moving forty 150-pound batteries, three at a time, from basement to shore. A wind generator on the roof charges twenty-four batteries to power the house (the two sets they’re tossing came from a railroad in ’78 and a nuclear plant in ’91). In town, Phoebe picks up chives, cilantro, thyme and oregano.

Food is a big part of the work weekend. The kitchen crew, headed up by Tobin and Erin Rodriguez, started prepping dinner at 9 a.m. A childhood buddy of the Wood boys, Tobin’s been volunteering at Clingstone for nearly a decade. The pair does all the grocery shopping and comes up with a theme; last year it was Thai, the year before homemade pasta. “The first step is what can we cook that’s cheap enough and then from there we choose an ethnicity,” says Tobin. This year the menu boasts New Mexico Green Chili Stew (a tomato-based stew with pork), veggie enchiladas, mango salsa and guacamole. Dessert is fruit crisp. He’s betting about fifty will stay for dinner, which will be served buffet-style.

Lunch is less involved, culinarily speaking, but everyone is ravenous for the spread laid out where Henry’s paperwork once sat: burgers, dogs, chips, cheese and crackers, fruit. And beer. Everyone breaks shortly after noon. They sit on stones, grab lawn chairs, paper plates balanced in their laps. Henry holds court, and he bounces from the present (all business): “Someone’s got to do the job of tightening that up [he points towards a rope ladder],” he says. “I’ll show them how, but it needs to be done” to the (much more playful) past. “My son Paul had a beer party here,” Henry says. “Four hundred people showed up.” Paul jumps in, “Actually, there was one party where 500 people showed up, back in the eighties. No one died,” he says with a laugh. Clingstone’s a lot tamer and cleaner than it once was; the bachelor-pad antics have long passed, like the time Paul and his buddies, who were staying out here, decided they didn’t feel like doing the dishes. They took all the dirty plates and glasses and chucked them into the bay.

Couples have met at Clingstone, and Henry likes to share their stories in between bites. “Hans — he was the best ping-pong player I’ve ever seen,” says Henry. “One night he looked everywhere for an empty room. There was a woman sleeping in one bed. He said, ‘don’t worry about it; she’s drunk and passed out.’ The next morning they came out hand in hand and were together fifteen years until he died.” There was also the young couple: “Eight years ago a guy and girl came out and met each other. Next year going steady. Next year engaged. Next year baby.” The moral of the story? “If you want to meet a man, this is the place to come,” Henry deadpans.


Family Affair: (left to right) Henry Wood, Roma Taitwood, Anne Tait, Dan Wood, Josh and Jen Rose-Wood, Jenn and Paul Wood.