Big banks and a Soldier and Sailors Monument stamp public, civic space in downtown Syracuse. Massive and monumental in style, the banks were built in the last decade or two of the 19th century, straddling the Erie Canal as it cut through the city. The war memorial was built in 1910.  The canal was paved over in the 1920s and turned into Erie Blvd, which preserves the straight line of the waterway. Redesigned in 2001, Clinton Square includes the reflecting pool, a memorial of sort, a remnant of the once mighty canal that once drove the economic life of the town and Central New York, when the town and region was still prosperous.