The Athenaeum design, influenced by the contemporary English work of Charles Barry, was begun in 1847 and completed in 1849.

To handle the business of architecture, he formed a partnership with his younger brother, James Elliot Cabot.

[1] They worked together until 1888, when Chandler was appointed director of the department of architecture of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 1879, Cabot & Chandler responded to H. H. Richardson's introduction of the Stick Style of Architecture into the U. S. by his Watts Sherman House in Newport, with Cabot's splendid mansion for Elbridge Torrey at 1 Melville Avenue in Dorchester, MA.

The same year the firm designed 12 Fairfield Street in Boston's Back Bay for Georgiani Lowell.

He married first in 1842, to Martha Eunice Robinson (born December 9, 1818; died November 28, 1871) of Salem, Massachusetts.

He married second in 1873 to Louisa Winslow Sewall (born June 3, 1846; died August 10, 1907) of Roxbury, Massachusetts.

[1] His second son, William Robinson Cabot, was educated as an architect and would practice in partnership with Richard Clipston Sturgis from 1888 to 1895.

[5] Cabot enlisted in the Union Army on September 12, 1862, with the 44th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, which saw action during the Civil War.