| Texas School Book Depository | |
|---|---|
 The Dallas County Administration Building in 2015, formerly the Texas School Book Depository | |
  Texas School Book Depository  Texas School Book Depository | |
| Former names | Southern Rock Island Plow Company Texas School Book Depository |
| Alternative names | Dallas County Administration Building The Sixth Floor Museum |
| General information | |
| Architectural style | Romanesque Revival |
| Location | 411 Elm St. Dallas, Texas, United States |
| Coordinates | 32°46′47″N96°48′30″W / 32.77972°N 96.80833°W /32.77972; -96.80833 |
| Elevation | 455 feet (139 m) |
| Construction started | 1901; 124 years ago (1901) |
| Renovated | 1981; 44 years ago (1981) |
| Cost | $3,040,510 |
| Owner | Dallas County |
| Technical details | |
| Structural system | B-Reinforced Concrete Frame Piers |
| Floor count | 8 |
| Floor area | 80,000 square feet (7,400 m2)[1] |
| Design and construction | |
| Main contractor | Rock Island Plow Company |
| Website | |
| The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza | |
Texas School Book Depository | |
Dallas Landmark Historic District Contributing Property | |
| Part of | |
| RTHL No. | 6895 |
| DLMKHD No. | H/2 (West End HD) |
| Significant dates | |
| Designated CP | November 14, 1978 |
| Designated NHLDCP | October 12, 1993 |
| Designated RTHL | 1981 |
| Designated DLMKHD | October 6, 1975[3] |
TheTexas School Book Depository, later known as theDallas County Administration Building and now "The Sixth Floor Museum", is a seven-floor building facingDealey Plaza inDallas, Texas.Lee Harvey Oswald was working as an employee at the building whenUnited States PresidentJohn F. Kennedy wasassassinated on November 22, 1963. Official government investigations[a] concluded that Oswald shot Kennedy from a sixth floor window on the building's southeastern corner. The building, located at 411 Elm Street on the northwest corner of Elm andNorth Houston Streets indowntown Dallas, is a Texas Historic Landmark.
The site was originally owned byJohn Neely Bryan.[1] In the 1880s, Maxime Guillot operated a wagon shop on the property. In 1894, the Rock Island Plow Company bought the land, and four years later constructed a five-story building for its Texas division, the Southern Rock Island Plow Company.[1] In 1901, the building was hit by lightning and nearly burned to the ground. It was rebuilt in 1902 in the CommercialRomanesque Revival style and expanded to seven stories. In 1937, the Carraway Byrd Corporation purchased the property, but they defaulted on the loan. It was sold at public auction in July 1939 and purchased byD. Harold Byrd.[1][5]
Under Byrd's ownership, the building remained empty until 1940, when it was leased by grocery wholesalerJohn Sexton & Co. Sexton Foods used this location as the branch office for sales, manufacturing, and distribution for the south and southwest United States. In November 1961, Sexton Foods moved to a modern distribution facility located at 650 Regal Row Dallas. By then, the building was known locally as the Sexton Building. The building was refurbished, and partitions, carpeting, air conditioning, and a new passenger elevator were added on the first four floors.[5]
In 1963, the building was in use as a multi-floor warehouse storing school textbooks and other related materials, and an order-fulfillment center by the privately owned Texas School Book Depository Company, which had moved from the first floor of the adjacentDal-Tex Building.[6] The company found that the upper floors had sustained oil damage from items stored there by the previous tenant, so they began to cover the floors with plywood to protect their books, stored in cardboard boxes, from the oil.[5] At the time, the building had three elevators.[7] The building's superintendent was Roy S. Truly (1907–1985), who detested Kennedy's pro-civil right stances, as historianWilliam Manchester recounted in his semi-authorized account of the assassination,The Death of a President: November 20–25 (1967).[8]
Work had begun on the west side of the sixth floor just before President Kennedy's motorcade, "leaving the whole scene in disarray, with stock shifted as far as the east wall, and stacks in between piled unusually high."[5] TheWarren Commission concluded thatLee Harvey Oswald, who was working as a temporary employee at the building, fired three shots from a sixth floor window at Kennedy'spresidential motorcade on November 22, 1963 and that there was no evidence that Oswald was part of a conspiracy.
The Texas School Book Depository Company maintained a second warehouse at 1917 Houston, several blocks north of the main building. The short four-story structure was well removed from the parade route, half-hidden on an unpaved section of Houston. Oswald's supervisor Roy Truly told the Warren Commission that he had the option to assign Oswald to either building on his first day at work. "Oswald and another fellow reported for work on the same day [October 15] and I needed one of them for the depository building. I picked Oswald."[9] This second building was eventually destroyed to make way for theWoodall Rodgers Freeway.[9]
According to Manchester in his book, this warehouse prior to November 22 was "the better known" of the two warehouses.[10]
The mayor of Dallas,Wes Wise, saved the Texas School Book Depository from imminent destruction, preserving it for further research into the assassination.[11]
The Texas School Book Depository Company moved out in 1970. The building was sold at auction toAubrey Mayhew, aNashville, Tennessee music producer and collector of Kennedy memorabilia, by the ownerD. H. Byrd. In 1972, ownership reverted to Byrd. In 1977, the building was purchased by the government ofDallas County. After renovating the lower five floors of the building for use as county government offices, the Dallas County Administration Building was dedicated in March 1981.[12]
On President's Day 1989, the sixth floor opened to the public, for an admission charge, as theSixth Floor Museum of assassination-related exhibits. On President's Day 2002, the seventh-floor gallery opened.[13][14] The gallery opened in February 2002 with the exhibit: "The Pulitzer Prize Photographs: Capture the Moment".[15] A $2.5 million renovation turned the storage area on the seventh floor into a new gallery space for the museum. Other exhibits that have hung in the space include works of Andy Warhol.[16][17]
In May 2010, burglars attempted to steal a safe from the Sixth Floor Museum, but fled when "they were confronted by a security guard," leaving the unopened safe suspended from awinch on the back of a truck.[18]
A marker on the front of the building reads "On November 22, 1963, the building gained national notoriety when Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly shot and killed president John F. Kennedy from a sixth floor window as the presidential motorcade passed the site." The word "allegedly" has been highlighted as vandalism byKennedy assassination conspiracy theorists.[19] The Sixth Floor Museum neither encourages nor discourages the idea of conspiracy theories.[20]
Media related toTexas School Book Depository at Wikimedia Commons
