An open rectangular pavilion, two bays long and one deep, under a two-tier concave hipped roof, painted green and ribbed from ridge to eave, its corners sweeping up into sheet-metal dragons on both tiers. A red finial tops the upper roof. Below the eaves runs a red frieze with a scalloped valance pierced by round openings. Six pairs of red cedar columns carry the roof on stepped, bracketed capitals, and each column stands on a pale green base. Overhead is a ceiling of painted boards, and the floor is brick.
Henry Thiele designed the Chinese Pavilion for Tower Grove Park, the park Henry Shaw gave to the city in 1868 and opened to the public in 1872. It went up in the spring and summer of 1873, according to the park’s receipts and vouchers. Thiele supervised the work and Herman Michels built it. The St. Louis firm of Hull and Cozzens made the ornamental metal roof, Jackett, McFall and Co. gilded it, and Philibert and Johannung supplied the lumber. It is the only shelter in the park with a rectangular plan. The pavilion reflects the Chinoiserie fashion of pre-Victorian England, as did the Chinese Chippendale fencing once used elsewhere in the park. Shaw and his horticulturist, James Gurney, planted a grove of ginkgo trees around it. When the Historic American Buildings Survey recorded it in 1974, the columns were dark green, the roof red with gilded ribs, the dragons black and the floor bare earth. The pavilion was restored in 1992 with money raised by the Friends of Tower Grove Park. A second refurbishment, completed in 2016 for $18,827 and again paid for by the Friends, gave the wooden columns new bases, realigned the brick floor, repainted the structure in five colors and polished the metal dragons.
