esquire.com – CLEVELAND—Folks were still at church of a Sunday morning, so the vast, brown sweep of the lawns at Cudell Commons were largely empty. The softball fields were silent and the basketball courts were vacant. The community center was closed for the day, but the park would fill up later. There were churchbells on the shallow breezes.

It is an oasis along West Boulevard on the west side of the city. There’s a playground in one corner that faces the back of the neighborhood school. At the opposite corner, behind a black wrought-iron fence, is a 60-foot clock tower, a memorial built in 1917 by Emma Cudell as a memorial to her husband, Frank Cudell, a prominent Cleveland architect who designed several buildings that are now on the National Registry of Historic Places. Atop the tower is a bronze hourglass. The four-sided glass clock face has no hands on it.