The Texas School Book Depository (now the Dallas County Administration Building) is the former name of a seven-floor building facing Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas (U.S.). Located on the northwest corner of Elm and North Houston Streets, at the western end of downtown Dallas, its address is 411 Elm Street. The building is notable for its connection to the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. According to four United States government investigations,[1] an employee in the building, Lee Harvey Oswald, fatally shot the president from a sixth floor window on the southeast corner. The case, however, was never adjudicated in the jurisdiction in which it occurred, owing in part to the death of the accused assassin. The structure is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.
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The site of the building was originally owned by John Neely Bryan.[2] During 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 the Southern Rock Island Plow Company.[2] In 1901, the building was hit by lightning and nearly burned to the ground. It was rebuilt in 1903 in the Commercial Romanesque Revival Style, and expanded to seven stories. The land was bought in 1937 by D. Harold Byrd, who by 1963 had leased it to the Texas School Book Depository.[2]
In 1963 the building was in use as a multi-floor warehouse for the storage of school textbooks and related materials and an order-fulfillment center by a private business of the same name. On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old former U.S. Marine who was working as a holiday-rush temporary employee at the building, fired three rifle shots from the sixth floor of the Depository into the motorcade of President of the United States John F. Kennedy. The President was rushed to nearby Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The conclusion of law enforcement, including the Dallas Police and the FBI, and later two government investigations over the span of 30 years, including the Presidentially-appointed Warren Commission, was that Oswald was the assassin.
For years, a large billboard with digital clock/temperature display was mounted on the roof. Its main advertisement was for the Hertz car rental company. A second ad reading CHEVROLETS (later replaced with FORDS as shown in the first photo below) was placed under the digital display. The billboard was removed in 1978 and re-mounted briefly in 1991 for the film JFK.
The Texas School Book Depository Company moved out in 1970 and the building was sold at auction to Aubrey Mayhew, a Nashville, Tennessee music producer and collector of Kennedy memorabilia, by the owner D. H. Byrd. In 1972, ownership reverted to Byrd, and the building was purchased in 1977 by the government of Dallas County. After renovating the lower five floors of the building for use as county government offices, the Dallas County Administration Building was dedicated on March 29, 1981. On President's Day 1989, the sixth floor opened to the public (for an admission charge) as the Sixth Floor Museum of assassination-related exhibits. On President's Day 2002, the seventh floor gallery opened.
On May 4, 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 a winch on the back of a truck.[3]
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