Lansingburgh, first chartered village in Rensselaer County, New York, was settled around 1763 and took its name from early settler Abraham Lansing combined with the Scottish word burgh. In the first quarter of the 20th century, boats at the Street Docks at 123rd Street were mostly built in Lansingburgh, with Peebles Island and Waterford in the background, and canal boats waited to enter the Erie Canal at Waterford, where both the Erie and Champlain Canals were located. The Lansingburgh shoreline, the United Shirt & Collar Company building, and the Lansingburgh Power Plant could be seen there, while the marina and boat launch have been restored. Herman Melville spent his youth at the house on First Avenue and 114th Street, wrote his first two novels there, and the house is now the Lansingburgh Historical Society. The United Shirt & Collar Company employed hundreds of local women in its Ironer Department. Chester A. Arthur, later a U.S. president from 1881 to 1885, lived at 626 First Avenue in 1846; after going to Union College in Schenectady at age 15 in 1845, he taught school in the one-room brick schoolhouse of School District #14 in the town of Schaghticoke on Verbeck Street and earned $15 a month.
