Wapping Police Station

Wapping Police Station, built between 1907 and 1910, was designed by John Dixon Butler. The building comprises a two-story-and-attic block facing the road, connected across a central yard to a three-story riverside block. The design is restrained and draws from the style of Norman Shaw.

The street-facing block has five bays and is constructed of finely pointed light grey-brown brick with Portland ashlar dressings. It features flush spaced quoins, flush plat bands at the ground floor lintel level, and as a first floor sill band. A similar frieze and shaped stone brackets support deep flat eaves. The raised gable ends have flush quoining, stone coping, and banded stacks. The slate roof slopes steeply and is set back from the eaves, with a near-vertical mansard attic containing casement dormers. Moulded cornices and alternating, stepped in, semi-circular and triangular pediments decorate the attic. There are two-light glazing bar sash windows on the first floor, and mullion-transom casements on the ground floor. A carriage archway is located in the second bay from the left, with a slightly eared architrave surround, stepped keystone to the lintel, and the lower part of the jambs tile faced. Simple Arts and Crafts-style area railings are present. The west passage elevation features flush squared stone, mullioned, transomed windows.

The riverside elevation is symmetrical with three bays and four stories. It has spaced flush stone quoins rising to the second floor, terminating in short sections of cornice moulding acting as corbel stops for an applied moulded stone gable that peaks in the centre of the parapet. Swept stone copings cover the flanking attic bays. The outer bays are treated with tiered oriel-bay windows with stone dressings, extending over three stories to the left, but stopping short above the ground-floor hatch with glazing and small paned side lights to the right. Narrow stone lintelled windows are located centrally on the ground and first floors with a two-light stone mullioned casement on the second floor. The lintel extends out as a plat band. There are two-light narrow sashes in the attic. John Dixon Butler succeeded his father as Metropolitan Police architect in 1895; the Blackwall River Police Station in Coldharbour (E2) was designed by the father.