I spent my teenage years a few blocks away from Lake Cliff Park, though I never went to it until a couple of years ago. A decade ago, the park, as I recall, seemed ragged and forgotten. All of the streets and buildings adjacent to it were derelict or on their way to becoming so. My sister has the priceless story of waiting in line at the 7-11 across the street from the park about eight years ago and watching two girls dressed to the nines come rushing into the store, flustered and worried. They asked the clerk at the counter where they were. “Honey, you in Oak Cliff,” he chuckled. The girls gasped, turned on their well-dressed heels and went careening out the double doors back to the safety of their car and over the river.

That was the general attitude about Oak Cliff in other parts of the city until recently, but it was also the attitude of some Oak Cliffers toward particular parts of their own neighborhood. I’m not sure when there came to be a collective wool-being-pulled-from-the eyes moment when a group decided to revive Lake Cliff Park, but the effort has turned a historical and neglected green space into, by my account, one of the loveliest in the city.

The park was originally built in 1906 by a whiskey baron from Ohio as a sort of urban resort, complete with gondolas, a log ride, an amphitheater that seated 2000, a roller coaster, nightly fireworks, and other pre-Disneyland, turn-of-the-century amusements. Various natural disasters forced the owner—Manford was his name—to sell the park to the city. Little of that resort remains. The lake is still there, as are what look like the original Japanese pavilions from the extensive Japanese gardens that were part of the original site. These pavilions, and the garden that stretches between them, are what make coming here such a pleasure.

These simple, wall-less stone structures speak to the genius of Japanese architecture, or any thoughtful building that takes its context into account – in this case, a slight hill overlooking the lake. One pavilion faces due north, so it’s shady all day, the sun only angling in to cast shadows on the old stone floor. The other pavilion skirts in a sharp zigzag from East to West like a long corridor or loggia. Our kids went running through this one, pretending, I think, to be Mary Lennox and Dicken from the Secret Garden because of all the crunchy old leaves that had blown in and gathered in piles, making it full of musty Victorian romance.

I do so love the idea that these pavilions are the originals from the heyday of Lake Cliff Resort. I harbor my own lacey, romantic notions of ladies in frilly dresses and men with top-hats having walked arm-in-arm down this same loggia, hoping for a bit of shade or privacy; or blushing Victorian brides posing for a portrait on the fountain ledge; or children skipping off down the stone steps where mine now play. In a city that is so often called history-less, this park serves as a kind of portal, if not into actual memory, at least into imagination.