Canada Square Park

Canada Square Park in Canary Wharf, London, is a rooftop park built over a shopping mall and parking structure on the historic site of the West India Docks. Developed starting in 1988 by Canadian firm Olympia and York, the surrounding financial center features One Canada Square, completed in 1991. The park's landscape, designed by Olin, features North American trees on its southern half and formal European horse-chestnuts on its northern side.

London · from the walk “Docks, Deals & Dollars” · Generated

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Canada Square Park, Canary Wharf, London E14 5AB

How did Canary Wharf in London get its name?

Look up at that gleaming pyramid crowning the sky... and now look down at the grass beneath your feet. You are standing on Canada Square Park... and everything about this place is a story of extraordinary transformation.......... The ground beneath you was once part of the West India Docks, constructed between eighteen hundred and eighteen oh two — the First great commercial docks built in nineteenth-century East London. When they opened, an observer declared them a feat of engineering unmatched since the pyramids. They were built like a fortress — high spiked walls, a moat, and their own police force... all to protect a fortune in Caribbean goods. Sugar, rum, coffee, and timber were the main imports. But sugar was the Biggest trade of all.......... Now here's a delicious piece of trivia. Ever wonder why this area is called Canary Wharf? It has Nothing to do with birds. Berth number thirty-two of West Wood Quay was built in nineteen thirty-six for Fruit Lines Limited, a subsidiary of Fred Olsen Lines, for the Mediterranean and Canary Islands fruit trade — and That is how it gained the name Canary Wharf. And here's the wonderful coincidence — the Canary Islands themselves are named from the Latin Islas Canarias, which in English means... Islands of the Dogs. So you're standing on the Isle of Dogs... at a wharf named after islands... also named after dogs. You couldn't make it up!......... After World War Two, the area struggled to recover from bombing raids, and the introduction of modern container shipping made these traditional docks obsolete. This led to widespread closures throughout the nineteen sixties and seventies. By nineteen eighty, the docks fell silent.......... Then came the Canadians. This square is named after Canada, because the original developers of modern Canary Wharf — Olympia and York — wanted to reflect their heritage as a Canadian company. The Reichmann brothers were an Orthodox Jewish family who had fled persecution in Vienna, passed through Tangier in Morocco, and eventually settled in Toronto. Through Olympia and York, they became the largest property development firm in the world in the nineteen eighties. At the family's peak, their combined wealth was estimated at thirteen Billion dollars. Paul Reichmann looked at this desolate wasteland and saw... a city.......... Construction began in nineteen eighty-eight, and the first buildings were completed in nineteen ninety-one, including One Canada Square — which became the UK's tallest building and a symbol of the regeneration of Docklands. But then... disaster. By nineteen ninety-two, Olympia and York declared bankruptcy in the biggest corporate failure of All time — with debts of twenty billion dollars.......... And yet, look around you. The dream Survived its dreamer. Now, here's one last secret about this very park. Canada Square is built on the roof of a shopping mall and parking structure. The designers at Olin invented new construction and planting technologies to create a landscape with large, semi-mature trees. The southern half of the square botanically represents the New World, with a serpentine path through an informal mix of North American trees, while the northern side references the Old World, with horse-chestnut trees formally arranged in a double Allée. So the very trees around you are telling the story of this place — the Old World of London meeting the New World vision of those Canadian dreamers who built it all.

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