Thanks to Mr.Erik Jacobs permission,  the photographer of Clingstone, an unusual, 103-year-old mansion in Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay, yatzer shares his beautiful photos followed by the text as it was found at The New York Times

© Erik Jacobs for The New York Times

Clingstone, an unusual, 103-year-old mansion in Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay, survives through the love and hard work of family and friends.

© Erik Jacobs for The New York Times

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.

© Erik Jacobs for The New York Times

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.

© Erik Jacobs for The New York Times

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.

© Erik Jacobs for The New York Times

The total cost of the construction, which was completed in 1905, was $36,982.99.

© Erik Jacobs for The New York Times

An early sketch of the house. Mr. Wood is as proud as any parent of his house, and keeps a fat scrapbook of photographs and newspaper clippings that document its best moments. Many of the historic photos he has were provided by the company that insured the house for its original owners.

© Erik Jacobs for The New York Times

The Newport Bridge is visible from the windows of the Ping-Pong room, to the left of the fireplace.

© Erik Jacobs for The New York Times

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.

© Erik Jacobs for The New York Times

There are 10 bedrooms at Clingstone, all with indecently beautiful views.

© Erik Jacobs for The New York Times

The dining room table seats 14. Refinishing the chairs is a task on the list for a future work weekend.

<
© Erik Jacobs for The New York Times

A sign by the ladder that leads to the roof reads: No entry after three drinks or 86 years of age. "It used to say 80 but we had a guy on a work weekend who was 84, so I changed it," said Mr. Wood, ever the realist. It would have been a shame to curtail the activities of a willing volunteer.

© Erik Jacobs for The New York Times