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Texas School Book Depository (1903)
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 John F. Kennedy. An employee, Lee Harvey Oswald, shot the president from a sixth floor window on the southeast corner. The structure is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.
The site of the building was originally owned by John Neely Bryan. 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 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 1903 in the Commercial Romanesque Revival style, and expanded to seven stories. In 1937 the property was acquired by the Carraway Byrd Corporation, and after the company defaulted on the loan, it was bought at public auction July 4, 1939 by D. Harold Byrd.
Under Byrd's ownership the building remained empty until 1940, when it was leased by a grocery wholesaler, the John Sexton & Co. Sexton Foods used this location as the branch office for sales, manufacturing and distribution warehouse 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. Refurbishment after Sexton's departure saw the addition on the first four floors of partitions, carpeting, air conditioning and a new passenger elevator.
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 the Texas School Book Depository Company. Some time after the company moved in, it was found that the upper floors had sustained oil damage from items stored there by the previous tenant, a wholesaler grocer. To protect the company's books (stored in cardboard boxes) from oil seeping up from the floor, a process was begun to cover the floors with plywood. Immediately prior to the Presidential visit, work had begun on the west side of the sixth floor, "leaving the whole scene in disarray, with stock shifted as far as the east wall, and stacks in between piled unusually high."
On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old former U.S. Marine who was working as a temporary employee at the building, fired the shots from the sixth floor that killed the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. Oswald was murdered in police custody before he could stand trial.
Texas School Book Depository (1903)
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 John F. Kennedy. An employee, Lee Harvey Oswald, shot the president from a sixth floor window on the southeast corner. The structure is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.
The site of the building was originally owned by John Neely Bryan. 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 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 1903 in the Commercial Romanesque Revival style, and expanded to seven stories. In 1937 the property was acquired by the Carraway Byrd Corporation, and after the company defaulted on the loan, it was bought at public auction July 4, 1939 by D. Harold Byrd.
Under Byrd's ownership the building remained empty until 1940, when it was leased by a grocery wholesaler, the John Sexton & Co. Sexton Foods used this location as the branch office for sales, manufacturing and distribution warehouse 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. Refurbishment after Sexton's departure saw the addition on the first four floors of partitions, carpeting, air conditioning and a new passenger elevator.
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 the Texas School Book Depository Company. Some time after the company moved in, it was found that the upper floors had sustained oil damage from items stored there by the previous tenant, a wholesaler grocer. To protect the company's books (stored in cardboard boxes) from oil seeping up from the floor, a process was begun to cover the floors with plywood. Immediately prior to the Presidential visit, work had begun on the west side of the sixth floor, "leaving the whole scene in disarray, with stock shifted as far as the east wall, and stacks in between piled unusually high."
On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old former U.S. Marine who was working as a temporary employee at the building, fired the shots from the sixth floor that killed the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. Oswald was murdered in police custody before he could stand trial.