Personal Data

Edward Clarke Cabot was born on April 17, 1818, in Boston, son of Samuel Cabot and his wife Eliza Perkins (daughter of Thomas Handasyd Perkins).

He married first on July 7, 1842, in Salem, to Martha Eunice Robinson (b. 1818-1819 in Salem; d. 28Nov1871 in Brookline), daughter of Nathan Robinson and his wife, Eunice Beckford.

He married second on October 13, 1873, to Louisa Winslow Sewall (b. 1845-1846 in Roxbury; d. 10Aug1907 in Brookline, MA), daughter of Samuel E. Sewall and his wife, Louisa M. Winslow.

Edward Cabot died on January 5, 1901, in Brookline.

Career

In frail health as a young man, at the age of seventeen he went to Illinois where he engaged in sheep raising.  He returned east in 1841 and, for more than four years, had a sheep farm at Windsor, Vermont.  He served for several months as a lieutenant-colonial of the 44th Massachusetts Infantry during the Civil War.

In 1845, Cabot submitted an Italian Renaissance design for the Boston Athenaeum.  It was accepted with the proviso that he associate himself with George M. Dexter, a civil engineer, to supervise the construction, which was completed in 1849.  From 1849 to 1858, he was associated with his brother, James Elliot Cabot, with whom (and Jonathan Preston) he designed the 3000-seat Boston Theater on Washington Street in 1854.  He was again associated with his brother from 1862 to 1865.

In 1875, he joined in partnership with Francis Ward Chandler.  In his Houses of Boston’s Back Bay, Bainbridge Bunting describes Cabot and Chandler as “the Back Bay’s most competent designers in the Queen Anne tradition.”  In 1888, Chandler became head of the MIT School of Architecture.  Two members of the firm, Arthur Greene Everett and Samuel W. Mead, became partners and the firm became Cabot, Everett, and Mead.  Cabot retired the same year, but the firm remained Cabot, Everett, and Mead until his death in 1901, when it became Everett and Mead.

Walter Kilham (in Boston After Bulfinch) indicates that Cabot and Chandler and Cabot, Everett, and Mead built “numerous country houses in the rambling and picturesque style of the period.”  In addition, the latter firm’s work included the hospital of Johns Hopkins University (1889) in Baltimore and Arlington Public Library (1892).

Back Bay Work