Melrose Street in the Central City, Christchurch

Melrose Street in Central City- formerly New Road and New Street. Named New Road in 1872 at the request of the residents. Patrick Street was another suggestion. Re-named Melrose Street in 1891 at the request of the residents. First appears in street directories in 1894.A small amount of information from the library website and I found the same information on Papers Past. No reason given for why the name Melrose but it is a Scottish place name so that is a possible reason. State of the road was mentioned in 1876, 1907 and 1909. The road was regraded, channelled and asphalted in 1891. The change of name to Melrose was at the request of the 13 residents of the street. Drains were mentioned several times from 1874 onwards. There seemed to be a drainage issue with many of the streets in this area. In 1880 there were three cases of typhoid and typhoid was a big issue in the early days of Christchurch causing many deaths. There was a Taylor family who lived on this street and there was at least two other Taylor families living on neighbouring streets. This street runs from Madras St to Barbadoes St and there is an entry to Ely Reserve on this street, Most of the houses here were built in the 1990s plus many built between 2016 to 2019. These are all high density housing crammed into tiny sections. There is one house from 1890 and a couple from 1920. There were a couple of the modern places that I liked and it was a pity that they were part of a huge high density complex. Parking would be a big problem here but I felt that I could almost live here or on a neighbouring street. Not sure that my son would appreciate it was I would then be within fairly easy walking distance to his place.