The station was first served by Metropolitan District Railway trains in 1902 and it has been exclusively a London Underground station since 1962. The main station building is of unusual architecture for this part of the London Underground, constructed by British Rail in 1972 following a fire. Bromley Tube station was renamed Bromley-by-Bow to distinguish it from the stations in the London Borough of Bromley eight miles away. Bow itself was originally known as Stratforde, becoming Stratford-at-Bow when a medieval bridge was built, in the shape of a bow. On 2 June 2008, an unexploded bomb from World War II was found close to the nearby Prescott Channel. The local community centre Kingsley Hall was famously visited by Mahatma Gandhi in 1931. In EastEnders, the fictional Walford East tube station takes the place of Bromley-by-Bow.

This Labyrinth was reinstalled in December 2021.