Commercial Road is a street in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in the East End of London. It is long, running from Gardiner's Corner (previously the site of Gardiners department store, and now Aldgate East Underground station), through Stepney to the junction with Burdett Road in Limehouse at which point the route splits into the East India Dock Road and the West India Dock Road. It is an artery connecting the historic City of London with the more recently developed financial district at Canary Wharf, and part of the A13. The road contains several listed buildings. These include the George Tavern, the Troxy cinema, the Limehouse Town Hall, the former Caird and Rayner Ltd works and the Albert Gardens estate. Route Commercial Road starts at a junction with Whitechapel High Street (the A11 close to Aldgate East tube station. It heads east, crossing the Limehouse Basin, the Regents Canal and the Limehouse Cut. At Burdett Road, the road forks in two, with East India Dock Road continuing to the left and West India Dock Road to the right. London Buses routes 15, 115 and 135 run along Commercial Road. History Commercial Road was constructed in 1802–6 as a direct route to link dock traffic between the West India Docks and East India Docks to the City of London. An Act of Parliament awarded construction to the Commercial Road Company, whose trustees were allowed to raise money and levy tolls. The road originally began at Back Church Lane and cut a straight line across fields north of the busy Ratcliffe Highway, taking advantage of land cleared by a major fire in 1794 that had destroyed a large part of the neighbourhood. By the 1830s it was almost entirely lined with houses all the way to Limehouse. In 1828, the Commercial Road Company built a tramway from Aberdeen granite along the road, to alleviate traffic concerns. The London and Blackwall Railway was built parallel to Commercial Road; along with the numerous factories, this caused the street to become overcrowded and polluted. In the 1860s Commercial Road became a public road, with ownership transferring to the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW), and road tolls were abolished. In 1870, the MBW extended the street westwards to Gardiner's Corner, where it met Whitechapel High Street and Commercial Street. This junction remained in place until Gardner's was destroyed in a fire in the early 1970s.