The Many Arcades Of Melbourne

Downtown Melbourne is a downtown with many arcades. Not the video game kind of arcades (though that would be nice!), but the old school shopping arcades, small buildings that are basically a "hallway" connecting several small shops on the inside.

Melbourne has no less than 5, that's right, five! arcades. That's a lot for a not very big downtown!

Let's start with the Melbourne Arcade (909 E New Haven Ave)

It's the nicest and most ornate of the arcades in Melbourne, and the most well preserved. It's got it's own little plaque up there!

It features a rather ornate (by arcade standards) interior on the first floor, with all the ceiling detail. Arcades would often have a sort of open center on the second floor, but this one has a solid ceiling.

This vintage coke machine occupies a corner in the stairwell, though I didn't take the time to test it.

The second floor is much more understated, and is entirely office spaces, as one would expect.

There's this directory on the second floor; the 3rd floor is taken up entirely by the Art Student Guild, there's not even a hallway. The staircase just very abruptly ends at their door.

Next we jump over for a quick look at the Branlan Arcade (901 E New Haven Ave), named after one of the homes of local developer Charles Brand, who also developed the Brand Arcade, which we'll look at next. It's a much smaller setup, and only had 4 stores at opening back in the 1950s, and doesn't seem to have grown much from there.

This is the Brand Arcade (818 E New Haven Ave), an open air arcade built by Charles Brand. It was rebranded as "Le Gallerie" in the 1980s by one of his children, as part of a downtown revitalization effort.

Its not normally this dead, I just showed up at the bizarre hour of like 5:30 on a Tuesday.

A post office used to anchor this end, but they quickly moved to a standalone facility.

Our next arcade is a bit of an oddball, and at first I never realized it was an arcade. This is the Coleman Arcade (720 E New Haven Ave); despite being built around the same time as the Brand Arcade, its much more like a shopping center in it's design. But, it does have a sort of central open air pathway/"hallway", and well, it calls itself an arcade, so who am I to judge.

There's another small section in the back, but I failed to notice it and as such failed to photograph it. Another time, maybe.

This historic marker sign denotes that this plot of land was once a "Tin Can Campground", a spot used to host "Tin Can Tourists" in the early 1920s. With modified Model T trucks and a spirit for adventure, they were some of the earliest road trippers. Let's not get into how any homeless person who camped here now would be chased off at a moment's notice.

These two photos are of the Railroad Emporium (924 E New Haven Ave). It's a modern incarnation of the arcade, being built in not the 1950s, but 2007. This space had previously been a furniture store through the 1970s, and the address goes quiet before then. Despite being built on the eve of a financial crisis, it seems to have held it's own, and is now home a few bars. All of which were closed at this time, since I strolled by on a quiet Tuesday evening.

And that wraps up our coverage of downtown Melbourne's arcades! I have a few more arcades to photograph, but they're surprisingly thin outside Melbourne. I only have 2 in Cocoa, and 1 in Satellite Beach outside this. None in Titusville or Eau Gallie, which I thought was odd.