Herman Melville House | |
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 Interactive map showing the location for Melville House’s location | |
| Location | 2 114th St., Troy, New York |
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| Coordinates | 42°46′23″N73°40′45″W / 42.77306°N 73.67917°W |
| Built | 1786 |
| Architectural style | Late Victorian, Early Republic |
| NRHP reference No. | 92001081 [1] |
| Added to NRHP | August 21, 1992 |
The Herman Melville House is a historic home located at Lansingburgh in Troy, Rensselaer County, New York. It was a home of author Herman Melville between 1838 and 1847.
The home was originally built about 1786 and substantially remodeled in the Late Victorian style about 1872. It is a 2+1⁄2-story, brick and timber frame dwelling with a gable roof. It has a 2-story rear wing.
Herman Melville and his family moved to Lansingburgh in 1838 after deaths in the family and financial concerns. Five years later, in 1843, Melville's brother Allan reflected on the house as "very pleasantly situated on the bank of the Hudson (where I am now writing). Economy was the object of this change of location, and the only one which influenced my mother to forsake the 'place of her heart,' her early companions and old friends." [2] During the family's time here, they were nearly impoverished, and Melville's mother Maria Gansevoort Melville relied on financial support from family and frequently wrote letters complaining to her brothers and asking for help. In December 1839, for example, she wrote: "It cannot be possible that I am to be left by my two Brothers to struggle with absolute want... If I have nothing to expect from my brothers but tardy, uncertain remitances, extracted only by painful relations of want — the Family must be broken up and its members dispersed." [3]
During his time here, Melville joined a local debating society, sent letters to the town newspaper, wrote a few love poems and, in 1839, published a two-part sketch titled "Fragments from a Writing-Desk" in the Democratic Press and Lansingburgh Advertiser. He also took a course in surveying at the Lansingburgh Academy in the unfulfilled hope of pursuing work with the Erie Canal. In the summer of 1839, he also took his first sea voyage: a four-month trip to Liverpool. [4] Upon his return, he taught at schools in Greenbush and Brunswick. The next year, 1840, he and a friend visited family in Galena, Illinois, before returning to New York. [4] It is believed that Melville wrote his first two novels while living in this home. [5]
The Melville family's former home is today preserved and maintained by the Lansingburgh Historical Society. [6] It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. [1]
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death, Melville was no longer well known to the public, but the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick eventually would be considered one of the great American novels.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion.
The Lansingburgh Academy was a seminary in Lansingburgh, New York. The seminary was in existence from the late 18th century to 1900, when the building that housed it was leased to the Lansingburgh School District. The building was sold to the school district in 1911. Initially used as a high school, the Lansingburgh Academy was eventually sold to the local library system; as of 2007, it served as the Lansingburgh Branch of the Troy Public Library. The Lansingburgh Academy was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
Leendert "Leonard" Gansevoort was an American political leader from New York who served as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1788.
Peter Gansevoort was a Colonel in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He is best known for leading the resistance to Barry St. Leger's Siege of Fort Stanwix in 1777. Gansevoort was also the maternal grandfather of Moby-Dick author Herman Melville.
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The Wayside is a historic house in Concord, Massachusetts. The earliest part of the home may date to 1717. Later it successively became the home of the young Louisa May Alcott and her family, who named it Hillside, author Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family, and children's writer Margaret Sidney. It became the first site with literary associations acquired by the National Park Service and is now open to the public as part of Minute Man National Historical Park.
Arrowhead, also known as the Herman Melville House, is a historic house museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. It was the home of American author Herman Melville during his most productive years, 1850–1863. Here, Melville wrote some of his major works: the novels Moby-Dick, Pierre, The Confidence-Man, and Israel Potter; The Piazza Tales ; and magazine stories such as "I and My Chimney".
Sunnyside (1835) is an historic house on 10 acres along the Hudson River, in Tarrytown, New York. It was the home of the American author Washington Irving, best known for his short stories, such as "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820).
Lansingburgh is a village in the north end of Troy. It was first laid out in lots and incorporated in 1771 by Abraham Jacob Lansing, who had purchased the land in 1763. In 1900, Lansingburgh became part of the City of Troy.
The Thomas Cole National Historic Site, also known as Cedar Grove, is a National Historic Landmark that includes the home and the studio of painter Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School of American painting. It is located at 218 Spring Street, Catskill, NY, United States. The site provided Thomas Cole with a residence and studio from 1833 through his death in 1848.
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The Harriet Beecher Stowe House is a historic home and National Historic Landmark at 63 Federal Street in Brunswick, Maine, notable as a short-term home of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Calvin Ellis Stowe and where Harriet wrote her 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Earlier, it had been the home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as a student. It is today owned by Bowdoin College. A space within the house, called Harriet's Writing Room, is open to the public.
The bibliography of Herman Melville includes magazine articles, book reviews, other occasional writings, and 15 books. Of these, seven books were published between 1846 and 1853, seven more between 1853 and 1891, and one in 1924. Melville was 26 when his first book was published, and his last book was not released until 33 years after his death. At the time of his death he was on the verge of completing the manuscript for his first novel in three decades, Billy Budd, and had accumulated several large folders of unpublished verse.
The history of Troy, New York extends back to the Mohican Indians. Troy is a city on the east bank of the Hudson River about 5 miles (8.0 km) north of Albany in the US State of New York.
The Isaac T. Hopper House is a Greek Revival townhouse at 110 Second Avenue between East 6th and 7th Streets in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Located just south of the New Middle Collegiate Church, it was built in 1837 and 1838 as a rowhouse. The building was also known as the Ralph and Ann E. Van Wyck Mead House, after its first owner. 110 Second Avenue is the only remaining rowhouse out of a group of four at 106–112 Second Avenue that was used by the Meads' extended family, and was originally known as 108 Second Avenue.
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