Shenton Way Road and district. Shenton Way was built on land reclaimed in 1932 from the Telok Ayer Basin. The original 27- m- wide road was designed by chief municipal engineer D. Wexton.

At first, the road was named Raffles Way, but in 1951, considering that there was already a surfeit of places named in honour of Sir Stamford Raffles, the municipality renamed the street Shenton Way in honour of Sir Shenton Thomas, who had been governor from 1934 to 1946.

In 1951, land along Shenton Way was opened up for redevelopment to ease traffic congestion around Raffles Place. Soon, banks and other commercial firms began to move into the large new buildings being built along this stretch of road. By the 1970s, Shenton Way had become the main financial district, earning the epithet ‘the Wall Street of Singapore’.