page_title: Commercial Street, London
section_title: Topography and architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Commercial Street, London / Topography and architecture
caption_attribution_description: The "Peabody" dwellings for the industrious poor, in Commercial Street, Spitalfields, London. A wood-engraving published in the Illustrated London News, July 1863 (shortly before the building was opened). Architect: H. A. Darbishire. Engraver unknown. Illustrated London News, 18 July 1863, p. 73. This is a photo of listed building number 1357541. General Collections Keywords: Poverty
context_page_description: Commercial Street is an arterial road in Tower Hamlets, east London that runs north to south from Shoreditch High Street to Whitechapel High Street through the East End district of Spitalfields. The road is a section of the A1202 London Inner Ring Road and as such forms part of the boundary of the London congestion charge zone.
  As the name implies, Commercial Street has historically been dominated by industrial and commercial activity, which it maintains to this day. It is on the City fringes, and much industry that was seen as too noisome for the City was once exiled to such areas as this. However, since the early 1990s the street has grown increasingly fashionable, while maintaining its busy commercial feel.
context_section_description: 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 Art Deco former 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 trade) start out nearby. Although the pub has long been refurbished, it still retains some fine original tilework. Prostitution remained a feature of Commercial Street until recently. Dorset Street, which ran off Commercial Street to the west immediately south of Spitalfields Market, was dubbed the "worst street in London".
  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 in 2012 was undergoing a major programme of regeneration that would see the demolition and replacement of several of the blocks. To the south again is the 11-storey Ibis London City budget hotel (opened 2005), and beyond that, at the junction with Whitechapel High Street, the Relay Building, a 21-storey residential development (completed 2014). On the eastern side of Commercial Street stands Toynbee Hall, the university settlement founded in 1884.
caption: The Peabody dwellings in Commercial Street: a wood-engraving published in the Illustrated London News in 1863, shortly before the building opened.
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