A Guide to East London’s Financial District, Its Surprisingly Good Public Art, and Its Weekend Identity Crisis
Canary Wharf: The Manhattan of East London, Though Comparisons Are Odious and This One Is Unavoidable
Canary Wharf is the cluster of glass-and-steel towers that grew on the former West India Docks from 1988 onward and now constitutes one of the largest financial districts in Europe, housing the London offices of banks, financial institutions, and professional services firms in buildings of such confident vertical ambition that they are visible from multiple points across London and from the top of hills in the surrounding boroughs. The development was, when first proposed, controversial enough to require the creation of the London Docklands Development Corporation with special planning powers specifically to bypass the normal planning process. The result is an estate of privately managed public spaces, towers, and gardens that functions as a city within a city — magnificent, controlled, slightly soulless on weekends, and considerably more interesting than its corporate reputation suggests if you know where to look.
The Public Art: Free, Extensive, and Genuinely Good
Canary Wharf has invested in public art throughout its estate with a consistency and budget that produces one of the largest free public art collections in London: sculpture, installation, and commissioned works by artists of genuine international standing, placed in the plazas, underpasses, and public spaces of the estate where they are encountered by the financial district’s workers daily and by visitors less frequently. The collection includes works by Thomas Houseago, Damien Hirst, and numerous others and is documented on the Canary Wharf arts pages with a map that allows the full collection to be walked in approximately two hours. This is free, permanent, and represents a cultural offer that the estate’s corporate reputation tends to obscure.
Crossrail Place Roof Garden: The Surprise on the Elizabeth Line
Crossrail Place — the Elizabeth line station at Canary Wharf designed by Foster and Partners and opened in 2015 — contains on its roof a botanical garden of genuine quality: a half-ellipse of planted space beneath a timber lattice roof containing plants from the regions connected by the Elizabeth line and functioning as a free public garden above one of east London’s busiest stations. The garden is open daily and is consistently one of the more unexpected free experiences in the financial district — a quiet, planted, contemplative space above the escalators and the commuter flows below. Crossrail Place also hosts independent retail and food on its lower levels. The garden is the reason to go up.
The Museum of London Docklands
The Museum of London Docklands occupies a Georgian sugar warehouse on West India Quay — one of the oldest surviving dock warehouse buildings in London, dating from 1802 — and tells the history of London’s port, the communities it created, and the trade it handled from the Roman period to the present day. The warehouse is a remarkable building: three floors of brick and timber that housed sugar, rum, and coffee from the Caribbean trade and now houses the story of that trade and its human consequences. Museum of London Docklands is free to enter and is one of the better free museums in east London. The Sailortown gallery — a reconstruction of the dockside neighbourhood that served the port workers and sailors — is particularly good.
The Waterways: Docks Repurposed
The West India Docks — the enclosed water between the towers — are the original Georgian dock basins around which the entire development was built and remain one of the more striking features of the estate: wide stretches of still water reflecting the tower facades in a combination of Victorian dock engineering and contemporary glass architecture that is more visually impressive than either element separately. The waterside walk around West India Quay and the Canary Wharf Crossrail dock edge is free, flat, and one of the better estate walks in east London for understanding the scale of what was built here and what it replaced.
Getting There
Canary Wharf station (Jubilee line) is one of the most architecturally significant tube stations in London — Norman Foster’s vast elliptical cavern is worth experiencing as a piece of engineering independent of any journey. Canary Wharf (Elizabeth line) at Crossrail Place is the newer approach. Heron Quays and Canary Wharf (DLR) serve the estate from above. The Thames Clipper from central London piers arrives at Canary Wharf pier for the best approach: arriving by river at a development built on the docks is the historically appropriate method and takes approximately thirty minutes from Embankment.
Final Verdict
Canary Wharf is more interesting than its corporate reputation allows. The public art collection is free and substantial. The roof garden is unexpected and excellent. The Museum of London Docklands is free and important. The Foster tube station is extraordinary engineering. Arrive by river. Walk the dockside. Find the art. Go up to the roof garden. Canary Wharf has more dimensions than its weekday function suggests. The weekend is the best time to discover them.
More: Londonist | The Daily Mash
SOURCE: British Humour vs American Humor
