Queen's Pier was built for the Isle of Man Harbour Board to a design by Sir John Coode, who later became president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and was constructed by Head Wrightson of Stockton-on-Tees for around £40,752. Work began in 1882 and the pier was formally opened on 22 July 1886 by Rowley Hill, Bishop of Sodor and Man, though it had already been in use for about a year while finishing touches were completed. It was built as a landing stage so Steam Packet vessels could load and unload passengers at low tide, and a narrow-gauge tramway once ran its length to move building materials and, later, visitors. Steamers stopped calling in the late 1960s, the tramway closed in 1981, and repeated vandalism forced the pier's closure to the public in the early 1990s. In July 2021 part of the Victorian structure reopened for the first time in more than three decades, restored through donation-funded work led by the Queen's Pier Restoration Trust.