 Villiers Street runs along the eastern side of Charing Cross railway station.The mansions facing in the Strand were built there partly because they had direct access from their rear gardens to the River Thames, then a much-used transport artery.The surviving York Watergate (also known as "Buckingham Watergate"), built by George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham in about 1626 as a ceremonial landing stage on the river, is now marooned from the river, within the Embankment Gardens, due to substantial riverside land reclamation following the construction of the Thames Embankment.