English: As seen in January 2023, the Veterans' Monument occupies the narrow wedge of land between Main, Grove and Morgan Streets in the city of Tonawanda, New York, in front of the former New York Central Railroad station which is now home to the Historical Society of the Tonawandas. A simple, stout marble obelisk standing 15 feet in height and dedicated "in memory of [the] soldiers, sailors & marines of the Civil War of 1861-1865", this is one of two monuments to that war in the city of Tonawanda, the other being a 26-foot white bronze shaft that has stood sentinel in the City Cemetery since 1910. The story of the Veterans' Monument begins with the 1923 dissolution of the local G.A.R. post, Winfield B. Scott No. 129, as by that time most area veterans of that long-ago conflict had died. It had earlier been stipulated that a portion of the receipts from membership dues should be used for the eventual construction of such a monument, and those plus the proceeds from the sale of their assembly hall on Adam Street added up to a $2,500 fund that proved sufficient to pay the monument's builders. As one of its final official acts, the post's Women's Relief Corps, under the direction of Mrs. Anna Neal, successfully petitioned the Board of Aldermen in September 1925 to sell the roughly 1,300-square-foot center island of the intersection of Young, Delaware, and Broad Streets, which at that time was the site of one of Tonawanda's last remaining city-owned horse watering troughs, a phenomenon increasingly consigned to history in the face of the rapidly encroaching age of the automobile. (In the present day, the space is occupied by the parking lot in front of the former Smoke on the Water restaurant). Construction proceeded briskly after the sale of the lot was approved, and the occasion of Armistice Day, the seventh anniversary of the conclusion of the First World War, was chosen to coincide with the monument's ceremonial unveiling. The festivities, which took place both at the site of the monument as well as the State Armory several blocks down Delaware Street, comprised a parade, musical performances, and prayers and patriotic orations by the Revs. Halliday Wood and Charles R. Sine of the North Presbyterian Church and the First Church of Christ, respectively. The placement of the monument at such a busy crossroads soon proved problematic: just the next year, many of those responsible for its construction were compelled to object (ultimately in vain) to a proposal by local business interests to permit on-street parking of automobiles in the monument's vicinity, and finally in 1942, after collisions by careless motorists had become so frequent as to threaten its structural integrity, it was moved to its present site.