Tobacco Dock

Cast iron under a lantern roof

The Skin Floor at Tobacco Dock remains, two centuries later, a floor almost without interior walls: cast iron columns with V-struts, large-span trusses, and a lantern roof designed to watch over Virginia tobacco, wool, rum, and hides. Completed around 1812 at the London Docks in Wapping, the warehouse—now a Grade I listed building—was surrounded by a customs perimeter wall. Below, brick vaults survive, which were once an underground city of wines and brandies; above, the open-plan space that house and techno promoters treated as a dance floor.

The Covent Garden that never was

Container traffic to Tilbury emptied the dock in the late sixties. In 1989, an expensive shopping center was inaugurated, featuring replicas of ships at the dock, which aimed to be the Covent Garden of the East End and closed within two years. In 2003, English Heritage placed it on the register of buildings at risk. In the summer of 2012, the Ministry of Defence used it as barracks for the Olympic Games. That same year, Patrick Donovan and Jonathan Read relaunched the warehouse as an event venue.

When the vaults became a club

It is not a nightclub with a fixed calendar: it is a multi-room warehouse that, when it gets dark, functions as a club. London Warehouse Events turned it into a house and techno circuit. On January 1, 2014, Seth Troxler, Maceo Plex, and Heidi opened the New Year from 14:00. In August 2014, Summer in the City arrived, with Groove Armada and an extra room in the vaults hosted by Damian Lazarus. In 2015, Acid Future brought DJ Harvey, Marshall Jefferson, Danny Rampling, Jackmaster, and The Martinez Brothers into the same venue, with a barbecue on the rooftop. That year, Rob da Bank's LEAF filled the dock with electronic music and digital art. An Awakenings and Drumcode Halloween, with Adam Beyer and Nina Kraviz, and in 2019 Lost! in the Dock confirmed that the building can handle indoor festival production, with multiple dance floors and a venue capacity of 10,000 people.

Sixteen thousand meters, fifty-seven spaces

Today, Tobacco Dock operates in Wapping as a rental venue: 16,000 m², two floors, and 57 spaces—galleries, docks, courtyards, and vaults—that can be combined as needed. There is coworking in a listed building, in-house catering, WiFi for thousands of devices, adjacent parking, and an AV partner, Creative Technology. The public arrives on foot from Shadwell or Wapping. What has not changed is the material: wood, brick, and a port converted into a dance floor.