Beginning in 1922, Edward Collings Knight, Jr. and Marie-Louise LeBel Knight developed this Corolla property as a winter residence and guest retreat centered on waterfowl hunting, naming it Corolla Island after canals and a boat basin were dredged to make the site an island. Built from 1922 to 1925 at a cost of $385,000, the house rose over a brick-walled basement with brass plumbing pipes and a French drain system and featured a three-story structure with an attic, eighteen-inch-thick walls framed with steel beams, eighteen dormers, five chimneys, bright yellow exterior wood trim and cypress siding, copper roof shingles, and a ventilation system in which the center chimney functioned as a natural air conditioner. Its design blended a long narrow form and gables associated with Philadelphia Style, bright yellow coloring meant to evoke a French country home, and especially Art Nouveau decoration with flowing lines and nature-inspired abstract motifs. The residence also introduced several Outer Banks firsts, including a basement, elevator, bidet, swimming pool, and both salt and fresh water taps. In 1940, Ray Adams bought the property, renamed it the Whalehead Club, and used it to entertain friends, investors, politicians, and the public. During World War II, after German submarines turned coastal waters off the Outer Banks into a wartime front in the spring of 1942 by sinking hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo shipping, the Coast Guard leased the property from Adams for the rest of the war, using it to rescue seamen, conduct mounted beach patrols, and serve as a receiving station for recruits awaiting reassignment after basic training; afterward it was demobilized and returned to Adams. After Adams died in 1957, George McLean and William Witt acquired the property and leased the house to educator Hatcher Williams for a summer boarding school for boys called Corolla Academy, which closed in 1962. That same year, as the Cold War unfolded, the Atlantic Research Corporation of Alexandria, Virginia, leased the property to pursue solid rocket fuel for aerospace applications, work that contributed to the successful development of large American booster rockets; the company purchased the site in 1964, moved its test-firing facilities in 1969, and sold the property. In the 1970s and 1980s, different developers owned the tract, and in 1992 Currituck County bought the deteriorated Whalehead Club for preservation, with restoration continuing.