Commercial Road, looking east

Standing outside his newsagents at #484 Commercial Road is Alfred Green, owner and postcard publisher.  He acquired the newsagents around 1904 and had moved on by 1908.  This parade of shops was on the southside of Commercial Road, between Dorset Street, later Pitsea Street, and Stepney Causeway.  Next to the newsagents, in 1906, were: at #486 is greengrocer Samuel Godley, with goods displayed outside - and at #488 was the Coffee House of Ellen Gosling, her name can be seen painted on the front of the building.  On the corner of Dorset Street was the Friends Mission Institute and opposite the Commercial Brewery.

Commercial Road was laid out in 1810 as a toll road.  It was built to allow the goods from all over the world being unloaded at the West India and East India Docks to be easily transported to the City of London.

On the northside of Commercial Road can be seen the East End Mission, the Sailor’s Palace and another parade of shops.  Some of these shops survived the blitz.  But the Sailor’s Palace site did not.  It became a bomb ruin and was later, along with the parade of shops, to become part of the Mountmorris Estate built in the 1960s.