Henry Davis Sleeper

Who was Henry Davis Sleeper?

Henry Davis Sleeper was a nationally-noted antiquarian, collector, and interior decorator. He was born March 27, 1878, in Boston to Major Jacob Henry Sleeper, a distinguished Civil War veteran and Maria Westcott Sleeper, their youngest son after Jacob and Stephen. He was grandson of Jacob Sleeper, one of the founders of Boston University as well as a clothier and manager of a real estate trust. Henry's education appears to have been by private tutors due to ill health as a child. No record of formal higher education has come to light.

Henry Sleeper was introduced to the Eastern Point in Gloucester, Massachusetts in the spring of 1906 by the Harvard economist A. Piatt Andrew who had built a handsome summer mansion, Red Roof, on a rock ledge above the harbor. Sleeper was much taken by the location and immediately decided to build a little further along the ledge from Red Roof. Eastern Point was an enclave occupied by a somewhat louche group of "Bohemian" artists and intellectuals with frequent visits from some of the more colorful and unconventional members of Boston Society, in particular Isabella Stewart Gardner, the legendary art collector and builder of Fenway Court in the Back Bay Fens, now the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The group became known as Dabsville, DABS containing the initials of the core members .