Riverside Station, including floating landing stage

Riverside Station, including floating landing stage, is a railway station complex completed in 1924 to designs by Sir Edwin Cooper for the Port of London Authority. Built in a neo-Georgian style, it comprises a ticket office, baggage hall, Riverside Station building, and floating landing stage connected by walkways and booms. The complex closed in 1990 but reopened in 1995 for leisure cruise use.

The buildings are constructed in red-brown brick laid in English bond with rusticated quoining and Portland stone dressings. The Riverside Station itself is a tall single-storey structure raised on cylindrical concrete piers with span arches, featuring a hipped roof of hand-made red tiles and stone coping. The attached baggage hall, also single-storey and raised on similar supports, runs along the western flank. A smaller two-storey block extends from the west end of the station, while another two-storey structure (partly serving as a public house) is positioned to the rear of a wide entrance bay at the eastern end.

The baggage hall presents 13 bays with keyed flat arches of hand-made red tiles over 35-pane metal casement windows on its north elevation, together with five sliding plank double doors and a continuous verandah supported on wrought-iron fretwork panels with plain railings. The south elevation displays stone torus moulding over a rusticated plinth and revealed panels above similar casement windows with multi-keyed tile arches and rusticated red-tile quoins. Two tall openings to the centre feature rusticated semi-circular arched architraves with carved keystones. A recessed second stage over the centre bears a Portland stone plaque inscribed "PORT OF LONDON AUTHORITY". The roof is surmounted by a tower with Portland stone balustraded parapet, urn finials, and a copper-domed cupola supported on Tuscan columns. Large semi-circular windows with decorative glazing bars complete the design.

The Riverside Station's front facing the river comprises 11 bays with a rusticated plinth and stone cornice beneath the parapet. Semi-circular windows are set in similar architraves with red tile quoining. A wide passenger entry is positioned in the second bay from the left within a square-headed red tile architrave, with flanking windows whose quoining continues as pilasters to the cornice. Similar architraves appear to the right-end bays. The hipped roof is surmounted by a small turret with urn finials and a square louvered belfry fitted with Tuscan corner pilasters and a weathervane.

The eastern entrance bay has a hipped roof with decorative fixed metal clerestory lights. The two-storey block to the rear features a five-bay east elevation with casement windows in square-headed red-tile architraves, quoining continued as pilasters linking first and ground floors. At first floor is a central arched window flanked by stone blocks with raised-relief roundels. Four ground floor windows were replaced in the mid-20th century. The south elevation displays two canted bay windows, while the one-storey south elevation has similar architraves to its door and canted bay windows, with overlights incorporating diagonally-crossed glazing bars and margin lights.

The interior of the baggage hall features a segmental-arched vaulted roof with heavy entablature supported on square brick columns with Ionic capitals of the Order of Bassae. The bays have paired columns and matching Ionic pilasters to the aisles, which feature panelled ceilings. A large decorative fanlight surmounts the entrance to the Riverside Station.

The Riverside Station contains single-storey offices along three sides, with keyed flat-arched architraves of red brick to 15-pane metal casement windows and half-glazed doors with overlights incorporating diagonally-crossed glazing bars and margin lights. Similar decorative patterning and architraves appear to the clerestory lights, with a red-brick band beneath the stepped cornice. The north elevation contains an entry to the platforms, while opposing wide entries at the north ends of the east and west elevations feature friezes of cast-iron bolection-moulded panels. Iron segmental-arched roof trusses support the roof. The central ticket office follows a similar style to the single-storey offices with splayed corners.

Flood prevention barriers and gates, installed in the late 1970s, were fitted to the baggage hall, Riverside Station, and the attached building west of the station. These comprise metal panels approximately 1.5 metres high, formed of thick metal sheets stiffened on their inner faces by square-sectioned metal framing. The panels are fixed against the inner face of the north walls of both the baggage hall and Riverside Station and to the outer face of the south wall of the attached building. They form a continuous barrier returning in stepped form part way along the east wall of the baggage hall. Hinged inward-opening metal flood gates of matching form are fitted at building openings on the north side. Angle braces provide additional stiffening to the panels at intervals. These flood prevention barriers and gates are not of special architectural or historic interest.

Four steel booms and two walkways with boarded walls and glazing-bar lights connect the baggage hall and Riverside Station to the floating landing stage. The landing stage has a weatherboarded ground floor and metal-sheeted first floor beneath a pitched roof covered in asbestos sheeting. The landward side features a series of 16-pane sashes at ground floor and 12-pane casements at first floor. The river side has 16-pane sashes at ground floor with several doorcases fitted with rectangular fanlights, while the first floor is set back with double doors. The roof is metal-framed.