It doesn't matter how many times you see it. The patinaed bronze angel guarding the family of Cleveland grocer Francis Haserot awes cemetery visitors. Haserot commissioned noted Cleveland sculptor Herman Matzen — who sculpted Public Square's Tom Johnson and Edgewater Park's Richard Wagner statues — to create the life-size statue sometime after his wife's death in 1919. Haserot had reportedly seen a scaled-down clay version in Matzen's studio, says Mary Krohmer, Lake View's director of community outreach. Often called the "Angel of Death Victorious," the monument is set into a huge carved block of pinkish Connecticut granite. Completed in 1929, its hands dutifully rest on an upside down extinguished torch. One of the angel's most striking features — weeping black tears — is the result of decades exposed to Cleveland's industrial landscape. Sulfur and other pollutant gases are absorbed into the atmosphere and return to the ground as rain, which causes the streaking, says Joe Hannibal of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. "The entire statue is striped," he says. But the environmental effects on the angel's face can be captivating. "You're drawn to the face of the angel," he says. "Then the wings kind of envelop you."
Find it: Section 9, northwest of the Hanna Mausoleum
