A Powderhorn Pavilion

In 1908 construction  was completed on  a handsome shelter at the southeast end of Powderhorn Lake  fronting 15th Avenue South at East 34th Street. The concrete building had a  steel frame roof covered with tile that projected ten feet over the outside walls. A reinforced concrete floor enclosed a  40 x 100 feet, space all in one room excepting a checkroom, boiler room and two small store rooms used for refreshment stands during the skating season. The shelter served as a warming house for the skaters in the winter months. During the summer,  windows and doors were removed  to create a cool open shelter used in connection with the playgrounds and boating on the lake. The building used steam heat and gas lights.

Designed by L. A. Lanioreaux and built by local contractor, James Leek, the new shelter cost $13,491.20. The original  building did not include toilets, because it was  too far from the city sewer line. A toilet addition was built seven years later. In 1963, the pavilion  building was renovated and became the first air conditioned  recreation center in Minneapolis. The building was replaced by a new facility complete with gymnasium in 1971.  The new building recalls the roof line  of the previous structure and the outdoor restrooms are still in the same place.

A year before the pavilion was built, A playground and toilet building were erected near 10th Avenue South and East 32nd Street. The toilet building was the best structure of its kind in any park. Pleasing and modest in appearance, the inside arrangements are at once sanitary, serviceable and neat. Built of hollow brick with rough cast cement plaster on the outside and a rough sand finish on the inside walls and cement partition, the plumbing was all strictly up to date in all its appointments. The entire building with its properly planted approaches was a decided success. Hard to believe they ever tore it down.