Continuing our walk down memory lane of historic neighborhoods in the Midlands this year, we turn this month to two of Columbia’s earliest suburbs, which date back to the 1890s. However, though they line opposite sides of the same street and were developed around the same time, the Shandon and Melrose Heights neighborhoods are surprisingly distinct.
Shandon
Shandon’s history begins in 1890 and 1891, when the Columbia Land and Investment Company purchased two parcels of land — one 305 acres and the other 115 acres — east of downtown Columbia to create what would be the city’s first planned suburb. Although most of the property that would become Shandon was undeveloped, a few structures did exist. According to the 2003 application for Shandon’s inclusion in the National Register for Historic Places, both a casino and a racetrack were located within the plat in 1895…