Nio-Mon Temple Gate was a c.1600 Japanese building from Hitachi Province first exhibited at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, Missouri. Following the fair, it was purchased and relocated to Fairmount Park. Also known as the "Japanese Pagoda", the area surrounding it was landscaped with a Japanese garden and lotus pond in 1909, funded by John T. Morris. A fire completely destroyed the Temple Gate on the evening of May 6, 1955, and thereby, as fate would have it, creating an ideal site for Shofuso.