A long, open park pavilion in the Roman manner: a screened loggia of white Tuscan columns, set at deliberately uneven intervals, runs between two enclosed end rooms under a broad green-tiled hipped roof with deep overhanging eaves. The walls and column-flanking piers are finished in rough golden-yellow and white aggregate, banded at the frieze with a course of inset red and green tiles. Turquoise wooden lattice screens of diamond pattern fill the end bays, and the column shafts carry red-and-blue ringed bases and caps. Broad steps rise to the central loggia, which frames a long view across the park lawn. The polychrome scheme is a restoration in yellow, blue, and white.
The Roman Pavilion is one of the ornamental shelters in Tower Grove Park, the 289-acre park Henry Shaw gave to the city in 1868 and which opened in 1872. The park's pavilions were designed by its architects Eugene L. Greenleaf, Henry Thiele, and Francis Tunica, most of them completed by 1889. In 1914 a wading pool designed by Ernst C. Janssen was added in front of the pavilion, flanked by playgrounds. The building's exterior polychromy has since been restored to a scheme of yellow, blue, and white.
