Queen Street is heavily built up with arcades, shops, hotels, offices and apartment high-rises such as MacArthur Central, Brisbane Square, Central Plaza, Aurora Tower, Treasury Casino, Wintergarden, Broadway on the Mall, The Myer Centre and QueensPlaza.

Before 1842 and free settlement, Queen Street was originally a track leading from the main section of the early Moreton Bay Penal Colony, crossing a stream known as Wheat Creek with a deviation going up to the Windmill.

Changes were then made to this plan with square blocks flattened into a rectangular grid with streets becoming 1.4 chains (27 metres).

[1] The first sitting of Legislative Assembly of Queensland in May 1860 occurred in the old converted convict barracks on Queen Street.

[5] Brisbane Courier described the fire as "the whole of the business premises and private residences...were, in a couple of hours, reduced to a heap of ruins".

[7] Power was supplied by a 10 hp generator driven by a small engine in a foundry in Adelaide Street.

[11] Queen Street is historically significant as it contains MacArthur Central, the building in which the American General Douglas MacArthur had his South West Pacific headquarters (from July 1942 to November 1944) during World War II and directed the Allied Forces campaign.