East Lansing, Michigan travel between Detroit and Lansing, which cut right through what is now East Lansing. The toll road was finished in 1853, and included seven tollhouses between Lansing and Howell. Michigan State University was founded in 1855 and established in what is now East Lansing in 1857. For the first four decades, the students and faculty lived almost entirely on the college campus. A few commuted from Lansing, and that number increased when a streetcar line was built in the 1890s, but there were few places to live in the then-rural area surrounding the campus. That started to change in 1887,
Robert Lansing (state senator) Robert Lansing (state senator) Robert Lansing (; February 2, 1799 Albany, New York – October 3, 1878) was an American lawyer and politician from New York. He was the son of Judge Sanders G. Lansing (1766–1850) and Catherine (Ten Eyck) Lansing (1769–1850). He attended Union College but did not graduate. In 1817, he removed to Watertown, studied law there with Egbert Ten Eyck (1779–1844), and was admitted to the bar in 1820. He was District Attorney of Jefferson County from 1826 to 1833. On December 22, 1831, he married Maria Hubbard (d. 1839), and they had several children, among them