Commercial Street (London) - Topography and Architecture

Topography and Architecture

The street's most significant features are Hawksmoor's grand Christ Church, on the corner of Fournier Street; and (almost opposite) Spitalfields Market, the old fruit and vegetable market that is now bustling again after a long period of uncertainty. Both the market buildings and Christ Church are lucky survivors, as demolition has loomed for both of them at one point or another.

The northern end of the street is dominated, on its eastern side, by the sprawling Exchange Building, an old Art Deco tobacco works, now residential. On the western side stands the former Commercial Street Police Station (built 1874-5, with an extra storey added in 1906), also now a residential block named Burhan Uddin House. Just to its south, with a wing extending into Folgate Street, is the first tenement block of model dwellings to be erected by the Peabody Donation Fund (now the Peabody Trust) for London's "industrious poor". The red-brick Jacobethan block was designed by H.A. Darbishire and opened in 1864, but was sold by the Trust in the late 1970s, and is now a private residential block named The Cloisters.

On the opposite corner of Fournier Street from Christ Church is the Ten Bells, a pub that is popularly associated with Jack the Ripper, as two of his female prostitute victims are supposed to have frequented the establishment. Many Ripper tours (a thriving industry) start out nearby. Although the pub has long been refurbished, it still retains some fine original tilework. Prostitution is still a feature of Commercial Street to this day, although considerably less evident than it was even at the turn of the millennium.

Much of the southern section of the street is occupied by warehouse buildings of the 1860s. Wentworth Street (part of the busy Petticoat Lane Market) runs off Commercial Street to the west. Immediately to the south of Wentworth Street lies the Holland Estate, a social housing estate with elements dating back to the 1920s, but which is dominated on its Commercial Street frontage by blocks of the late 1960s and early 1970s, including a 22-storey tower block, Denning Point. The estate is now managed by Eastend Homes, and is currently (2012) undergoing a major programme of regeneration, which will see the demolition and replacement of several of the blocks. To the south again is the 11-storey Ibis London City budget hotel, which opened in 2005. On the eastern side of Commercial Street stands Toynbee Hall, the university settlement founded in 1884.