This entrance was reconfigured in 1888 and no longer matches the description provided by MacAdam five years earlier. The 1870 entrance had cost only $3,000 and was designed for pedestrian use with provisions for its later expansion into a carriage entrance. The 1888 remodeling was designed by the well-known architectural firm of George I. Barnett & Sons, who were also responsible for the adjacent gatehouse.  

The South Gate Lodge was the last park building completed during Shaw's lifetime; like the refurbished entrance, work on it was begun in 1888, just one year before Shaw's death. It was designed in the Romanesque revival style by George I. Barnett, the architect from whom Henry Shaw had commissioned both his city house (originally at Seventh and Locust; moved to the grounds of the Missouri Botanical Garden under the terms of his will) and his country house (the "Tower Grove House" that is now surrounded by the Botanical Garden) in 1849, as well as the Palm and Plant Houses in Tower Grove Park. Its construction - at a cost of more than $20,000 (almost twice that of the Superintendent's House built twenty years earlier) - was supervised by James Gurney, Sr., and completed in April 1889.