The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza (aka Texas School Book Depository, Southern Rock Island Plow Company Building, or Dallas County Administration Building) - Downtown Dallas, Texas

Dealey Plaza is included in the block of Elm Street in Downtown Dallas where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. The area of the Dealey Plaza Historic District (NRHP #93001607), along with the West End Historic District (NRHP #78002918), are listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) and both include the building in the photograph above. Dealey Plaza is also considered a National Historic Landmark (NHL).

This 7-story 80,000-square-foot red brick structure was built in 1901 by an unknown architect as a warehouse and showroom for the Rock Island Plow Company of Illinois; it replaced an 1898 structure that burned earlier the same year. The free-standing warehouse, about 100 feet square, stands on the northwest corner of Elm and Houston Streets. Its main facade is on Elm Street extended (the pre-1936 Elm Street) with the eastern side on Houston Street. The west side faces the rail and switching yards. The north side faces spurs of the rail yards connecting with Pacific Avenue, the primary east-west rail transit way through Downtown Dallas.

The warehouse, though it possesses certain characteristics of early Chicago skyscraper construction, was built with Classical details, including arched windows on all floors except seven, with those on six being round arched on the central five of the seven bays of each facade; multi-story pilasters (running floors two to six) with limestone capitals, and other stylized features characteristic of early 20th-century warehouses. It has masonry load-bearing walls with interior heavy pine square milled beams supporting the flooring. The brick used was a formed common style. A dropped metal ceiling, offices, and show windows were built on the first floor. The seventh-floor corporate offices included a dropped metal ceiling, with interior brick walls stained maroon, and interior window trim painted dark green. The windows were wood, double hung, set in structural masonry arches with the exterior cornice of metal. A painted exterior sign, above the seventh-floor ceiling, read "Southern Rock Island Plow Co." The "O's" in the sign concealed louvers, which ventilated the attic spaces. (This sign was removed at an unknown date.) The building was set back on the northwest first-floor corner to accommodate the loading and unloading of heavy equipment from the adjacent rail track. The upper floors cantilevered out over the track on that side.

The Rock Island Plow Company and its successor, the Southern Rock Island Plow Company, retained ownership until 1937. In 1939, D.H. Byrd of Dallas purchased it and afterward leased it to a variety of tenants. At the time of the assassination in 1963, it was leased to the Texas School Book Depository Company, a private textbook brokerage firm not affiliated with the State of Texas, which, nevertheless, warehoused and supplied textbooks to Texas schools. The firm maintained corporate offices in the building, and used the upper floors for storing textbooks.

The storage areas in the building on floors four, five, and six, typically filled with stacks of boxes of schoolbooks, were free of interior partitions, with wooden whitewashed ceilings, and whitewashed millwork beams set at 14-foot intervals supporting the floors. The interior brick walls were also whitewashed. The hardwood floors were rough. Access to these floors was by freight elevator or by the enclosed wooden staircase in the far northwest corner. Lighting was supplied by metal domed hanging fixtures with bare electrical bulbs. An exposed metal water pipe fire sprinkler system ran along the ceilings. All the electrical wiring was exposed conduit mounted on the horizontal and vertical wooden beams. (*Note: On November 22, 1963, workmen were laying a new flooring of rectangular plywood sheets over the existing flooring on the sixth floor of the warehouse. When the assassination occurred, at 12:30 p.m. local time, the workmen were at lunch.)

In 1970 the Depository Company moved out and Byrd sold the building to Aubrey Mayhew of Nashville, Tennessee, who planned to turn it into a commercial attraction centering on the association with the Kennedy assassination. Mayhew defaulted on his payments two years later. The building reverted to Byrd in 1972 shortly after an employee of Mayhew's set fire to the interior, which suffered only small damage. Between 1970 and 1977 the warehouse deteriorated; there was some discussion during the early1970's of demolishing it, but the city refused to issue a demolition permit. In late 1977, Dallas County purchased the old warehouse from Byrd, using funds voted in a public bond election. Between 1978 and 1988, the County renovated five floors and the basement for use as administrative offices and as the seat of County government. The fate of the sixth floor, which was sealed off and not exhibited to the public, remained an unsettled issue. A 1979 study funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities recommended that the floor be used for a major exhibition on the legacy and assassination of President Kennedy. The results were accepted and acted upon by the Dallas County Commissioners Court.

In 1988-89, the County, in cooperation with the non-profit Dallas County Historical Foundation, restored the sixth floor, installed the permanent Sixth Floor exhibit, and constructed and opened a new Visitors' Center to the north of the warehouse. The character of the exhibit and its non-intrusive use of historic space have won critical acclaim as well as a 98% approval rating from its approximately 300,000 annual visitors. Six films, graphics, over 300 historic photographs, and radio & tape recordings, including oral history recordings by witnesses & newsmen, are featured. Restoration and adaptation of the sixth floor was done under the general supervision of architects Eugene George and James Hendricks. The exhibit content was largely the work of Conover Hunt, with design by the Washington, D.C. firm of Robert Staples and Barbara Charles. The films were the work of Allen and Cynthia Salzman Mondell; Martin Jurow was the executive producer. The Texas Historical Commission and the National Park Service were advisors.

The two evidential areas--the sniper's perch (seen in the 6th window from the bottom of the far right row of windows) in the far southeast corner and the area where the rifle was found, with a nearby stairwell and freight elevator--are kept from public access by clear glass walls. No evidence is on display in those areas; nearby exhibit copy discusses them. They are furnished with duplicates of cardboard boxes placed as they were arranged on November 22, 1963 (based on examination of some dozen photographs of this corner taken on the day of the assassination). A clear plexiglass pane has been installed in the space on the far southeast partially raised corner window to indicate its position at the time of the assassination. As a safety measure, metal and glass barriers were installed in the concrete flooring in front of all windows accessible for public viewing. (The bottoms of the windows are only 18" from the floor and all exposed window frames are also sealed shut with small brass screws.)

Dealey Plaza Historic District
npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/88315def-c6a9-408b-ac2a-b...

West End Historic District
catalog.archives.gov/id/40971667

Three bracketed photos were taken with a handheld Nikon D7200 and combined with Photomatix Pro to create this HDR image. Additional adjustments were made in Photoshop CS6.

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Taken in: United States / Texas / Dallas (show map)

Taken on: April 29, 2024

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Camera: Nikon D7200, f/7.1, 30mm, ISO 160 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Nikon D7200
Aperture:	f/7.1
Focal Length:	30mm
ISO:	160
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Windows)
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