East Lodge, Duthie Park, Aberdeen

East Lodge, located within Duthie Park in Aberdeen, was designed by William R McKelvie in 1883 as part of the design for this quadrangular-plan public park. The lodge is a single-story, two-bay building constructed in a Baronial style to the northeast of the park’s main entrance. It is built primarily of tooled coursed grey granite, featuring long and short finely finished margins, a rough-faced base course, chamfered reveals, an eaves cornice, and decorative spherical stone finials at the apex of the gables.

The west (entrance) elevation is asymmetrical. A blank bay is located to the left, while a gabled bay projects to the right, showcasing a three-light canted window on the ground floor, and a narrow single-pane window in the gablehead. A square-plan entrance tower is set into the re-entrant angle to the left, featuring a window at its centre, a blind oculus in a hoodmould above, and a roll-moulded doorway with a panelled timber door and letterbox fanlight on its return. A pyramidal spire, with a fishscale banded roof and iron weathervane, crowns the tower.

The south elevation is also asymmetrical, with a bipartite window positioned off-centre to the right on the ground floor. The east elevation features 20th-century additions, largely unseen in 1999. The north elevation is symmetrical, with a gabled structure incorporating a bipartite window surmounted by a nailhead stone set within a stepped hoodmould, and a narrow single-pane window in the gablehead. Deeply chamfered angles are present at the outer left and right sides.

The lodge is fitted with predominantly two-pane replacement timber windows with top hoppers. It has a grey slate roof with lead ridges, and a louvred gableted ventilator breaks the roof’s pitch to the west. Coped stone skews with gableted skewputts are also present. The chimneys are constructed of corniced, stop-chamfered granite with octagonal and circular cans. Decorative cast-iron rainwater goods are incorporated into the design. The interior was unobserved during a survey in 1999.

The park's gateways provide access to the northeast, west, southwest, and southeast. These gateways each feature two-leaf decorative ironwork gates flanked by single pedestrian gates. Four square-plan gatepiers, with battered rough-faced rubble bases, ashlar shafts, and spherical finials on decorative corniced caps, mark the gateways. Low quadrant granite walls, coped and with terminating piers matching the gatepiers, run alongside the gates. Coped granite boundary walls, finished with ashlar on a rough-faced base, define the outer walls, stepped up to the west and surmounted by iron railings.