Melbourne, West Melbourne, Melbourne Beach and Melbourne Village

They are four separate local governments that share a name and a corner of south Brevard County.

The City of Melbourne is the largest. Its About the City page says it sits astride the Indian River Lagoon, with a large portion of the city on the mainland and a portion on a barrier island, and gives its current population as 88,499 (Bureau of Economic and Business Research, 2025) and its size as 51.59 square miles, or 33,016.28 acres, as of March 2026. Melbourne City Hall is at 900 East Strawbridge Avenue, phone 321-608-7000. The City of West Melbourne has its City Hall on Minton Road, the Town of Melbourne Beach has its Town Complex on Ocean Avenue on the barrier island, and the Town of Melbourne Village runs its business from a Town Center on Hammock Road.

Each one has its own elected council or commission and its own hall, so a Melbourne mailing address alone does not settle which of the four governments applies; the city and town websites are the guide to limits, permits and elections. The sections below take each one in turn, starting with the original city and the merger that gave it its present shape.

The City of Melbourne took its present shape partly through a merger, because the separate community of Eau Gallie became part of it in 1969.

The National Register of Historic Places nomination for the William H. Gleason House, held by the National Park Service, states that Eau Gallie was incorporated into Melbourne in 1969. The same nomination says the NASA program at nearby Cape Canaveral in the 1950s promoted development in Melbourne and Eau Gallie, and it lists the Gleason house at 1736 Pineapple Avenue with Melbourne as its city.

Melbourne's charter provides for a council-manager form of government, as the city's About the City page explains: the council sets policies and goals, including the annual budget and tax rate, and appoints a city manager, who serves as chief administrative and executive officer, and a city attorney. The council also appoints volunteers to municipal boards, most of them advisory, and citizens may speak at public hearings held before any new laws are approved and before the annual budget and property tax rate are finalized. In the U.S. Census Bureau's ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimates, Melbourne city had 86,576 residents and a median age of 42.5, and its median household income was $66,991. That scale is the backdrop for the smaller Melbournes around it.

West Melbourne was created in 1959 to avoid annexation into the City of Melbourne and to prevent the levying of ad valorem taxes.

That is how the City of West Melbourne history page explains its origin. The city provided limited services in its early years: its first annual audit showed revenues of $13,578 and expenses of $2,138, against $37,028,775 in revenues and $28,085,405 in expenses in the 2019-2020 audit. The same page carries a 1955 view of the Platt Family Grocery Store on US 192 (New Haven Avenue) at the intersection of East Court and West Court.

West Melbourne had 3,050 people in the 1970 Census and 25,924 in the 2020 Census, and its demographics page gives a current population estimate of 32,476 and a city limit size of 10.76 square miles. The two cities still share water: the history page says West Melbourne purchases its water from the City of Melbourne and sells it to West Melbourne customers through lines and meters the city owns, and that it has over 10,000 water and sewer customers. West Melbourne operates under the Council / Manager form of government, in which the Mayor and City Council serve as the board of directors and the City Manager is the chief administrative officer; City Hall is at 2240 Minton Road, West Melbourne, FL 32904, phone 321-727-7700. On its home page the city describes the Ellis Road Widening Project, an expansion from two to four lanes meant to improve access to Melbourne Orlando International Airport and ease congestion following the 2020 I-95 interchange opening.

Melbourne Beach is a separate town on the barrier island that calls itself Brevard County's oldest beach community, established 1883.

That line heads the Town of Melbourne Beach home page, which lists the Town Complex at 507 Ocean Avenue, Melbourne Beach, FL 32951, and the Town Hall office at 321-724-5860. The National Register nomination for the Melbourne Beach Pier says the pier was built during the winter of 1888-1889 by a group of western New York State investors who formed the Melbourne and Atlantic Railroad Company and founded the settlement, and it calls the pier the oldest known, and perhaps the only, example of such piers remaining on the Indian River. A 2010 state historical marker says Myrtle Cottage, built in 1888 near Ocean Avenue and Pine Street by Mrs. Hannah Cummings and her daughter Grace, was the first house in the area known as Melbourne Beach, and that its boarders included Major Cyrus Graves and others who helped found the town.

Access shaped the town. The pier nomination describes a railroad from the outer end of the pier across the island to the ocean and a series of ferries the Beaujean family ran from the pier, with ferry service continuing until 1923, carrying passengers, supplies and mail. It says the tracks were removed in 1921 following completion of a bridge from the mainland to Indialantic-By-the-Sea, one and one-half miles to the north, although another passage of the same document dates the track removal to 1923. When Rufus Beaujean applied for a Melbourne Beach post office in 1891, he listed the population as 28. Today the town operates under a Commission-Manager form of government, with a Town Commission of five members, the Mayor and four Commissioners-at-Large, each elected for three-year terms.

Melbourne Village is a small town that grew out of the American Homesteading Foundation, which the State Archives of Florida credits to the same three founders as the town.

The Florida Memory catalog of the State Archives of Florida names Elizabeth Nutting, Virginia Wood and Margaret Hutchison as the founders of the American Homesteading Foundation and the town of Melbourne Village. The record, a 1955 photograph of Ralph Borsodi and Nutting beside a sign for the future University of Melbourne, notes that Borsodi lived in Melbourne Village from 1950 to 1960, started the University of Melbourne and served as its chancellor until 1957, and that the university's land and buildings were later sold to Brevard Engineering College, which became Florida Institute of Technology.

Florida Tech tells that last step from its own side. Gordon Patterson's Secret History account for Florida Tech News says Wood and Hubert Normile, representing the University of Melbourne trustees, offered Brevard Engineering College a one dollar a year, ninety-nine-year lease on the university's forty-acre campus. Today the town is run from the Melbourne Village Town Center at 555 Hammock Rd., Melbourne Village, Florida 32904, phone (321) 723-8300, with office hours Monday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and its Town Commission lists Susan Ditty as mayor.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by re-reading the four municipal websites (City of Melbourne, City of West Melbourne, Town of Melbourne Beach and Town of Melbourne Village), two National Park Service register nominations, the Myrtle Cottage marker, the Florida Memory record, a Florida Tech News history and two ACS 2020-2024 tables.