Commercial Lane

For a period, south end named Kytes Lane & Commercial Lane, now Paynes Place.

Named 1865.

Located at or near: 127-131 Little Bourke Street.

Probable or possible origin of name: Commercial Coffee & Dining Rooms/Inn, adjacent.

Location is approximate.

For more information, see: Bate, W., Broome, R., Davis, N., May, A. J., & Stitt, H. (2024). The story of Melbourne’s lanes: Essential but unplanned (pp. 20, 112). ISBN 978-1-875173-12-9.

"First, we should be aware of the power of the present (at various times) to obliterate the past. An early unnamed right of way beside 452 Flinders Street, which became Murphys Lane in 1869, was upgraded to Custom House Lane when that important building was completed in 1876. The alley behind Payne's Bon Marché drapery in Bourke Street only became Paynes Place in 1907, after a series of name changes from its first listing in 1865 as Commercial Lane. By the time the Regent Theatre was built the Argus newspaper had deserted its dead-end lane Argus Alley, and the theatre's name was given to the parallel throughway, Regent Place. Early governors' names on La Trobe Parade and Hotham Place were scratched in favour, respectively, of George Parade (1935) and Cocker Alley (1906). Because of their suggestiveness, perhaps, besides doubtful reputations as part of a theatrical demi-monde off Little Bourke and Little Lonsdale streets, Romeo Lane was rubbed out in favour of Crossley Street in 1876 (even before the 1884 clean-up), and Juliet Terrace became Liverpool Street in 1890. Fifty years after the Grand Coffee Palace was renamed Hotel Windsor in 1893, Lang Lane [east] turned into Windsor Place. In more recent times one unnamed lane, off a section of Little Collins Street colloquially known as Chancery Lane, was christened Austral Lane in 1932. Athenaeum Lane replaced Sleights Lane in 1937. " p. 112.