An open wood picnic pavilion built as a small classical temple, its low cross-gabled roof closing in plain triangular pediments at the ends. Paired chamfered posts painted red, white, and blue rise from blue plinths over a brick floor, joined by round-arched spandrel brackets with molded red-and-white capitals. The roof is clad in wood shingles, and a crest of gilded cast-iron palmettes and scrolls runs along its lower edge. Picnic tables fill the open floor beneath a boarded ceiling that repeats the painted scheme.
Henry Shaw placed roughly a dozen fanciful pavilions through Tower Grove Park as ornaments and as shelter for picnic parties. The Cypress North Pavilion and its identical twin, the Cypress South, were built in 1870–71 to a design submitted by Eugene L. Greenleaf, among the earliest of the group; the park had been established in 1868 through Shaw's gift to the city. The pair takes its name from the grove of cypress in the nearby circle of the central drive, and the cast-iron roof ornament was cast by the St. Louis foundry of T. R. Pullis and Brother. The park's collection of Victorian shelters is part of its designation as a National Historic Landmark.
