An open octagonal picnic pavilion in Tower Grove Park, built as a carriage shelter. Slender wood columns — painted red with stepped blue caps — carry a broad shingled roof that flares over the seating and rises in tiers to a lantern; the lantern's louvered sides are edged with a fretwork valance and pierced diamond ornament and topped by a tall white spire and a red ball finial. Sawn gingerbread brackets in green and white fill the spandrels between the columns. The whole stands on an octagonal paved slab, open on every side to the surrounding lawns.
Tower Grove Park, the Victorian walking park Henry Shaw gave to St. Louis, opened in 1872. The Old Carriage Shelter was designed the following year, in 1873, by Henry Thiele, and set a short distance south of Main Drive near the park's music stand. As a carriage shelter it was a covered stop where visitors arriving by horse-drawn carriage could pull in out of the sun or rain; it was originally fitted with hitching posts and enclosed by a wooden fence in the "Chinese Chippendale" pattern used at the park's Arsenal and Magnolia Street entrances. The fence and hitching posts were later removed.
