Dorchester Illustration no. 2425 Robert Chamblet Hooper
In the 19th century many sea captains had a Dorchester connection. Recently we posted some comments about Enoch Train. Today we see another captain.
Captain Robert Chamblet Hooper (1805-1869)
Robert Chamblet Hooper was born in Marblehead into a wealthy merchant family. He attended Phillips Academy, Andover, and entered the class of 1822 at Harvard at 13 years of age. After his second year at Harvard, he took a vacation aboard one of his father’s vessels, the brig Union. after visiting Gibraltar, Marseilles, Nice and other ports, he decided to obtain the remainder of his education at sea and traveled to Europe, the West Indies and south America until he was qualified as a captain and business manager of freights.
At the age of 20 he took the ship Walga to Russia. After that successful voyage, he was entrusted with a very large ship, the Arbella, of 400 tons. He retired from the sailing life and established himself as a merchant in Boston. He owned, bought and sold ships and other craft. He imported sugar and other commodities and even owned a share of Central Wharf and the whole of Constitution Wharf.
In 1845 he built a home in Dorchester and called it Oakland.
The following is from an article by Anthony Sammarco that appeared in the Dorchester Community News, January 11, 1991.
The land in Dorchester was composed of slight hills and valleys, with a superb view of Boston from the summit. It was chosen, according to Gertrude Hooper, his granddaughter, “so the sun would not blind him on the drive home from his Boston office.” He built a large and architecturally significant villa he named “Oakland,” and he entertained lavishly. He was probably among the most wealth residents of ningteenth-century Dorchester.
In 1869, the last year the town published a Taxable Valuation, his house alone was appraised at $40,000. The 20-acre estate was bounded by Dudley Street and Hartford Street. The Hooper Family retained ownership of Oakland after his death in the same year, but subdivided the estate over the next four decades.
Lingard Street was first known as Hooper Street in honor of the family. Robin Hood Street, Chamblett Street and Half Moon Street were laid out through the Hooper Estate, and substantial houses were built by well-to-do families. The aspects that had attracted Hooper to build in Dorchester were the same as those that attracted others in the early “Street Car Suburb” period: gentle slopes, outcroppings of puddingstone, superb views of Boston to the north and the Blue Hills to the south, and beautiful old oak trees.
The Hooper family had built and moved to a townhouse on Beacon Street in the Back Bay, but they held ownership of Oakland until 1911.
Then the house and the immediate land surrounding it was sold to the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. The house was adapted for use as the rectory of Saint Paul’s priests. In the 1930s, the stone church of Saint Paul’s was designed and built by Maginnis & Walsh, the architects of the archdiocese. The rectory was used until the late 1970s, when it was demolished and a smaller building was erected on the same site chosen by Hooper over a century before. The gentle slopes, the panoramic views, and the picturesque aspect of the area remain to this day, but the former estate of Robert Chamblett Hooper is no more.
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