The 1919 Front Street Fire and Downtown's Rebuild — Melbourne, Florida

In 1919 fire swept Front Street, the original business row of Melbourne on the waterfront near Crane Creek. Melbourne Main Street, the nonprofit that manages the historic downtown, states in its history of Downtown Melbourne that in 1919 a fire destroyed all of the commercial buildings along Front Street. Two other published accounts agree on the scale: the Florida Department of State wrote in April 2019 that most of the downtown was destroyed during a fire that year, and the RICHES Melbourne Collection at the University of Central Florida records that most of Downtown Melbourne was destroyed by a fire in 1919.

Those three sources establish the year, the place and the outcome, but none of them gives the month, the cause, the number of buildings or any account of injuries. This page therefore describes the fire through what the record does show: the Front Street that burned, the town that existed around it in 1919, and the New Haven Avenue district that replaced it during the 1920s.

Front Street was Melbourne's first commercial strip. Melbourne Main Street writes that in the late 1800s residents carried on much of the town's commercial activity in wooden buildings clustered along Front Street. The street faced the Indian River Lagoon, and the district history credits the town's growth to the railroad built in 1893, the lagoon location and the adjacent port in Crane Creek, where farmers could ship produce to distant markets at low cost. Cornthwaite John Hector, the first postmaster, later opened a general store at Crane Creek.

The Front Street merchants had already survived one collapse. The Genealogical Society history records that the Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Indian River Railway reached Melbourne in July 1893, and that hard freezes in December 1894 and February 1895 wiped out the citrus and pineapple industries around Melbourne, which took years to recover. By 1900 only a sandy, one-lane trail linked Melbourne and Eau Gallie by land, so the waterfront stores on Front Street remained the natural trading point for boats on the lagoon.

Wood construction was the norm for a small river town. The Genealogical Society of South Brevard history by Weona Cleveland records that the first telephone switchboard was installed in Melbourne in 1906, when there were 15 telephones in town and the population was slightly under 300. G. W. Hopkins established the Union Cypress Sawmill and Railroad in South Melbourne, then called Hopkins, in 1912, and Melbourne acquired electricity in 1914.

By the time of the fire, civic life was already spreading away from the waterfront. The Florida Tech African American chronology of Brevard County records that the Melbourne Public Library opened in 1918 in Campbell's store on lower New Haven, the street that would become the heart of the rebuilt downtown.

The clearest snapshot of the town that year comes from the school built at the same time. The Henegar Center building history states that construction of the Melbourne School began in 1919 and that it opened for students in the fall of 1920, when Melbourne had only two street lights, three churches and no paved roads. The neoclassical building, designed by architect W. M. Christen, was built at a cost of $140,000 and held 12 steam-heated classrooms, a library, an auditorium and a science room.

Sources differ on the school's cost. The Florida Tech chronology records that construction of a building later known as the Henegar Complex began on New Haven Avenue in 1919 at a cost of $6,400, with a second building added in 1926. The gap may reflect different buildings or different phases; neither source explains it.

The school mattered to the recovering downtown. Henegar Center records that the first high school class at the Melbourne School had only 13 students and graduated in 1921, and that the school was the only one in the area through the 1920s and 1930s. It is now described as the oldest surviving public building in Brevard County and the last remaining building of the original Melbourne School complex.

The rebuild moved the business district inland. Melbourne Main Street writes that within a few years, during the 1920s Land Boom, a new commercial district emerged on nearby New Haven Avenue. Rather than reconstructing the wooden waterfront row, merchants built along the road that ran west from the river, the corridor that still carries Melbourne's historic downtown.

A bridge set the pace. The Department of State's 2019 account says that rebirth of the city began two years after the fire, when a bridge was built across the Indian River Lagoon and sparked a new wave of economic development. The Genealogical Society history dates the first bridge across the Indian River at Melbourne to 1921, the same year W. T. Wells gave the city land for what is now known as Wells Park. The Florida Tech chronology lists the first bridge in 1919, one of several date differences in the local record.

The link to the beaches grew stronger later in the decade. Melbourne Main Street records that the Ernest Kouwen-Hoven Causeway was built to connect Downtown Melbourne to the beachfront barrier island, tying the new New Haven Avenue district to the oceanfront communities across the lagoon. The combination of a new school, a new bridge and a land boom turned the post-fire downtown into a road-oriented district rather than a dockside one.

The burned waterfront is now public space. Melbourne Main Street states that Front Street and New Haven Avenue have been restored into multiple community parks, the Melbourne Harbor Marina, waterfront housing and hundreds of restaurants, shops and businesses. Its revitalization work began in 2002, when Downtown Melbourne became a designated Main Street, and the Florida Department of State named Melbourne Main Street the April 2019 Florida Main Street Program of the Month.

The school begun in the fire year also survives in a new role. Henegar Center records that the Melbourne building was named for longtime teacher and principal Ruth Henegar in 1963, closed as Ruth Henegar Elementary School on June 11, 1975, and reopened after a $2.5 million renovation as a performing arts center, with its first show on October 25, 1991. It stands at 625 East New Haven Avenue, a block from the post-fire commercial strip.

The post-fire buildings are protected through the city's own register. The City of Melbourne historic preservation page reports that since 2006 the city has locally designated six historic resources and one historic district, including a property at 418 East New Haven Avenue. Exterior changes to designated buildings require a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Historic Preservation Officer or the Historic and Architectural Review Board before a building permit is issued.