Local landmarks include two music theatres, the Steinwerder ends of the Old Elbtunnel and Köhlbrand Bridge, and the shipyard of Blohm+Voss in which the old Pilot House still stands.

Together with the neighbouring district of Kleiner Grasbrook, Steinwerder forms the eastern part of the port of Hamburg.

Hamburg, including Steinwerder, has taken the relatively unusual step of regenerating and expanding its maritime operations rather than redeveloping the waterfront for other uses.

[6] The Old Elbe Tunnel has linked Steinwerder to St. Pauli on the northern river bank since 1911 and is open to both road vehicles and pedestrians.

[5] Steinwerder was once called Nordersand (North Sands) and was an island until the dike-building of the Middle Ages brought it into use as farmland.

Most notable was the World War II battleship the Bismarck, at which time B&V was the largest shipyard in Germany.

[9] In 1932 Hermann Blohm's sons founded the Hamburger Flugzeugbau (HFB) to make all-metal aeroplanes in the shipyards, which were suffering from the global depression.

[11] B&V's fortunes revived in 1952 when the City of Hamburg guaranteed credit to the B&V subsidiary Steinwerder Industrie AG, formed in 1950, to restart ship repairs and by 1953 some 900 workers were back in employment.

The Eclipse built for the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich is, at 162 metres (531 ft 6 in) in length, the second-longest private yacht in the world.