Clingstone is a 105 years-old mansion, built in 1895 for (one-imagines) a particularly eccentric Wharton (yes the family that founded UPenn's august business school). It sits in the middle of the Narangasett Bay of Jamestown, R.I. - close to the more touristy Newport. Wharton contumaciously built the property after the government seized the property for his original summer house in Jamestown so that it could enlarge Fort Whetherill. Wharton is said to have dryly remarked "I'm going to build where no one can bother me." And so he did.
One of Philadelphia's tabloids later said that Wharton wouldn't last a season in his new house, and that it wouldn't last through the first Nor'Easter it would inevitably face. He summered there every year therafter until his death in 1938. Well done you eccentric Proper Philadelphian.
Wharton has a lot in common with George Whittell, Jr., builder and owner of the Thunderbird lodge (and plane and boat, all of which were named Thunderbird as well).
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