Through the analysis on the five maps of Suzhou ancient city, including Watercourse in Suzhou Prefectural City in the Emperor Chongzhen period of the Ming Dynasty and Suzhou Patrol Zoning in the Emperor Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, this paper argues that Suzhou’s waterfront streets are distributed along watercourses and abided by the land-water double street layout. The street distribution layout saw a gradual change from "dense in northern Suzhou and sparse in southern Suzhou, eastern Suzhou-western Suzhou balance" in the Ming Dynasty to "dense in eastern Suzhou and sparse in western Suzhou, southern Suzhounorthern Suzhou balance" in the Qing Dynasty. This change represents the transformation of urban spatial texture, reflecting people-land contradiction, traffic conflicts, and handicraft industry areas along with urban changes in the context of Suzhou’s rapid industrial and commercial development in the Ming and Qing dynasties.