Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. 17 historic topographic surveys show this location, the earliest from 1888.
From the record
“The John Cabot House is a historic house at 117 Cabot Street in downtown Beverly, Massachusetts. Built in 1781 by a prominent local businessman and ship owner, it was the town's first brick mansion house.”
Wikipedia article John Cabot House, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 480 National Register listings published here for Essex County · listed in 1975 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.75000246- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
In 1786, especially, the burden of debt and taxation, together with the weight of a depreciated currency, bore heavily upon Beverly, in common with every town in the State. It was in this year that Shay's rebellion occurred, to aid in suppressing which soldiers from Beverly joined the Essex company, under Colonel Wade, of Ipswicli, an officer known and trusted by General Washington.
The last individual living in Beverly to whom Washington then spoke was Captain Peter Homan (it is said), who died in 1871, at the age of ninety-one. He was then a boy of nine, at work in the factory. As a child, Mrs. Grant " assisted in laboring for the soldiers of freedom at that early day of our nation's history ; when a woman, wife and mother, she worked for the sons of America in 1812, and as an aged grandmother, she knit stockings for the soldiers of the Union in 1861."
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 55 fires within 5 miles of Capt. John Cabot House
between 2006 and 2020, burning about 226 acres in total. 1 started naturally. 1 was recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Recreation and ceremony
17
Smoking
9
Equipment and vehicle use
8
Debris and open burning
7
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
5
Misuse of fire by a minor
3
Power generation/transmission/distribution
2
Fireworks
1
Natural
1
Railroad operations and maintenance
1
Arson/incendiarism
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 8,041 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Capt. John Cabot House between 1800 and 1975: 3,064 Plantae, 2,249 Animalia, 1,318 Fungi, 755 Chromista, 466 Unrecorded, 124 Bacteria, 65 Protozoa.
12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A H HIGGINSON, A. A. Eaton, A. B. Hervey and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
8 workings within 5 miles of Capt. John Cabot House: 5 plants, 1 unknown, 1 producer, 1 past producer.
6 still produce. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, Zirconium, Thorium, Tungsten. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Beverly, the town this property stands in, in 15 storm reports between 1993 and 2020: 7 thunderstorm wind, 3 hail, 2 flood, 1 heavy rain.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
Local police reported numerous trees blown down. At the Beverly Airport, a wind gust to an estimated 70 to 75 mph occurred during a severe thunderstorm, flipping over several light aircraft and damaging a total of 14 aircraft. Five were damaged beyond repair.
The Federal Street railroad underpass and portions of Park Street flooded, resulting in several cars getting stuck in the floodwaters. At least eight inches of water flooded the Cummings Center, flooding all first floor businesses (about 200). The Department of Public Works garage flooded, damaging police cars and other city vehicles. Approximately 100 houses were affected by flooding.
Several trees downed. Lightning struck several homes. Damage by fire occurred to one house on Gregg Street after lightning hit a telephone cable entering the house.
United States Geological Survey topographic
sheets whose coverage includes this point. Matched by taking the coordinate the National Park Service records for this property, then
testing that coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet.
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
The Cabot House, c, 1781, is located on the edge of Beverly's uptown business district facing the main road, Cabot Street, and is bounded by Central Street and Franklin Place. The fenced and landscaped backyard blends with other period homes in the area. This elegant Federal mansion, five bays wide, is built of brick which was made a few blocks away. It has a hip roof with interior chimneys. The house foundation and entrance steps are granite. The main frame of the house is made of hand hewn 13" x 15" pegged oak members; the 4" x 6" studding is tenoned into the main frame at 12" inter- vals, and the bracing is morticed and tenoned into the major uprights. There is also a solid brick wall running through the middle of the cellar parallel with the front of the building.
The building is essentially unaltered on the exterior. In 1802, the present two story wooden ell was added to the back of the building. The ell has a gabled roof and is two bays deep, three bays wide. The elegant roof entablature consists of Greek fretwork topped by large dentils. The front entrance portico is supported by two Ionic columns and has Greek fretwork and dentils running along the porch cornice. The eight-panelled door is flanked by fluted pilasters and topped by a transom and has full-length sidelights which illuminate the classic hall and stairway of the main entrance. "All of the facade windows and the windows of the other elevations are topped by skewback brick lintels.
The interior, which has remained intact, has a conventional floor plan consisting of a central hall with double staircase and four rooms per floor.
/ARCHITECT STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE On the east side of Cabot Street, surrounded by houses of the same period, stands the? magnificent home of Captain John Cabot, one of Beverly's most successful merchants. The 1781 house is architecturally significant not only because it is one of the few remaining mansions of this period which has not been greatly altered, but because it was the first brick mansion built in Beverly. All of the elegant exterior wood and brick work have been preserved, and the interior has been cited by numerous architects who have visited it as one which deserves national recognition and protection. Historically, the house is significant because Captain John Cabot and his brothers were involved in state politics.
house pos e1get cann tecaus John represented the town in the General Court in 1792 and in 1796 was nominated as a candidate for representative to Congress but der clined the honor. Captain Cabot started on a commercial career in Salem, in partnership with his father, after he graduated from Harvard College in 1763, His father died four years later and the following year (1768) Captain John, his mother and his siblings moved to Beverly. John Cabot lived in the house in Beverly built by his mother in 1773 (on the corner of Cabot and Central Streets) until her death in 1781, At that time Captain Cabot built the Cabot House, across the street from his mother's house, In 1802 he sold the house he had built, but leased the southern half for seven years. He moved to Boston c.
1809 and died there in 1821, Cabot was a prominent merchant in Beverly and for many years was in partnership with his brother, Andrew Cabot.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 75000246, 11 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
Block
