Sir Thomas Gresham's original Royal Exchange fronted onto Cornhill, but its successor on the site, designed by William Tite, faces towards the Bank of England across the junction with Threadneedle Street.

The "Standard" near the junction of Cornhill and Leadenhall Street was the first mechanically pumped public water supply in London, constructed in 1582 on the site of earlier hand-pumped wells and gravity-fed conduits.

As an alternative to this “Standard”, 200 metres away from Leadenhall Street, opposite No 32 Cornhill, Google Maps Street View shows a pillar with spout and pump handle inscribed: “On this spot a well was first made... by Henry Wallis Mayor of London in the year 1282.”[4] In 1652, Pasqua Rosée, possibly a native of Ragusa, Italy, opened London's first coffeehouse, in St. Michael's Alley off Cornhill.

65, published the popular literary journal The Cornhill Magazine from 1860 to 1975, as well as the Dictionary of National Biography.

Cornhill Street is the address of the "Scrooge and Marley" counting house, the employer of Bob Cratchit, in Charles Dicken's 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol.

A statue of the engineer James Henry Greathead was erected in 1994 in the road beside the Royal Exchange, which lies within the ward.