The West India Docks opened in 1802. They were the brainchild of Robert Milligan, a Scottish-born merchant whose family ran sugar plantations in Jamaica, and they were built to handle the enormous trade in sugar and rum that British Caribbean colonies sent home. The Import Dock came first, in 1800-02; the Export Dock followed by 1806. Ships could be unloaded directly into quayside warehouses surrounded by high walls patrolled by armed Dock Police - a precaution against theft on a scale that contemporary observers found impressive. The original Import and Export dock walls and two of the original nine warehouses still survive as Grade I listed structures, the only intact remnants of London's first great commercial dock built between 1800 and 1810. The docks ran for nearly two centuries. Then, in the 1960s, shipping moved to containers, and containers could not fit through the narrow lock gates of the old Pool of London docks. By 1980 every dock in the Port of London upstream of Tilbury was closed.

Margaret Thatcher's government created the London Docklands Development Corporation in 1981 and granted the Isle of Dogs Enterprise Zone status the following year, which meant generous tax relief for anyone willing to build something. The Canadian property firm Olympia and York, run by the brothers Albert, Paul, and Ralph Reichmann, was willing. They started construction in 1988 with a master plan drawn up by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. One Canada Square, the centrepiece, was finished in 1991 - fifty floors, 235 metres, the tallest building in the United Kingdom for the next twenty-one years and topped with the pyramidal beacon that still pulses red across east London. The timing could not have been worse. The London commercial property market collapsed almost the moment the building opened, and in May 1992 the Canary Wharf development corporation filed for bankruptcy. The Reichmann brothers, who had at one point been worth roughly ten billion dollars, lost most of it. Their tower stood half empty above the Isle of Dogs for years.

What saved Canary Wharf was the Jubilee Line Extension. The original Docklands Light Railway had reached the site in 1987, but the DLR was a small driverless system that could not move the volume of bankers a real financial district required. The Jubilee Line Extension - approved partly because the government wanted it open for the Millennium - finally connected Canary Wharf to the West End and the City in 1999, the year the rescued Canary Wharf Group went public again under a consortium that included the Saudi investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Within five years it housed the European headquarters of HSBC, Barclays, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse, and Deutsche Bank. The Elizabeth Line arrived in 2022, sealing Canary Wharf's connection to Heathrow and Reading. The cluster has since grown to include Landmark Pinnacle, South Quay Plaza, One Park Drive - residential towers that have multiplied since planning rules were loosened in the 2010s - and the Newfoundland, currently the tallest build-to-rent building in the country.

Walk between the towers and the surprise is how green the place is. Canada Square at the centre becomes an ice rink in winter and an open lawn in summer. Cabot Square has a fountain that throws curtains of water around a central jet, named for the Cabot brothers, John and Sebastian, who explored North America in the 1490s. Westferry Circus to the west is a circular garden built over a traffic roundabout, enclosed by hand-forged railings designed by the artist Giuseppe Lund. On the roof of the Elizabeth Line station at Crossrail Place is one of the largest roof gardens in London - a 300-metre wooden enclosure that uses the Greenwich Meridian, running directly through it, to separate plants from the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. The Eden Project opened a waterfront garden in the Middle Dock in October 2024 with floating islands and biodiversity planting. The Canary Wharf Art Trail, more than a hundred sculptures and installations scattered across the estate, is the largest outdoor public art collection in London.

There is a story Londoners tell about themselves that the City is the real financial heart and Canary Wharf is the upstart, and it is true that the Square Mile was, for a while, alarmed enough by the wharf's growth to relax its own planning rules and start building offices above railway stations and roads. But the rivalry has settled into coexistence. The City does insurance, equities, and the Bank of England. The Wharf does retail banking, asset management, and law on industrial scale. The Troubadour Canary Wharf Theatre opened in autumn 2025 with the world premiere of The Hunger Games on Stage. There is open-water swimming in the 220-year-old Middle Dock. There is electric karting in Cabot Square. There is a free nine-hole mini-golf course in Montgomery Square. The bananas are long gone. The wharves they were unloaded onto are still here, with skyscrapers on top of them.