| In 1917-1918, the New York State Legislature abandoned the old Erie Canal in favor of the newly constructed New York State Barge Canal System. To complete the first phase of a plan to build an east-west highway through Syracuse, the City purchased five and one-half miles of original Erie Canal lands from the State. In the same |
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Filling the original channel to a depth of seven to ten feet across the city was no small undertaking. Hard landfill — stone, gravel, brick and concrete — was dumped into the canal. Soda ash waste, which had been deposited in large waste beds along the southwestern shore of Onondaga Lake, was used in great quantities in western sections as a successful landfill. By the end of 1927, |
| transaction, the City also acquired more than two miles of abandoned Oswego Canal lands that joined the Erie Canal at the Weighlock Building. The combined purchase cost was $860,000. This stretch of the Erie Canal was maintained until 1923 when the arduous task of filling in the canal through Syracuse's "Common Center", Clinton Square, began. |
 Looking west from Montgomery Street. Warren Street bridge is in the foreground; Salina Street bridge is one block to the west. |
temporary road surface had been constructed along eighteen city blocks and the first section of permanent roadway was then completed in the six block portion from West Street east to State Street through the heart of downtown Syracuse. By the beginning of the Great Depression, the old Erie Canal from Genesee Street on Syracuse's near west side to the Thompson Road boundary on the east had |
| From 1923 to the Great Depression, work progressed slowly in both directions to the east- west city boundaries. As late as 1925, filling was in progress at the Weighlock Building, only two one-half blocks east of Clinton Square. |
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been transformed into a paved thoroughfare to accommodate greatly increased automobile traffic through Syracuse. Those who decided the fate of the Erie Canal little realized that less than half a century would elapse before there would be a reawakening of interest in the Canal. |
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