Texas School Book Depository
|
|
SchoolbookDepository.jpg
In 1963, the building, originally constructed in 1901, was in use, as implied in its former name, 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, an ex-Marine and chronically-unemployed drifter who was working as a holiday-rush temporary employee at the building, fired shots from the sixth floor of the Depository into the Presidential motorcade of John F. Kennedy, killing the President, who was rushed to nearby Parkland Memorial Hospital. The conclusion of law enforcement at the time, including the FBI, and later the Presidentially-appointed Warren Commission, was that Oswald acted alone; many conspiracy theorists dispute this. Most conspiracy theories involve a small grassy hill with trees not far from the front of the Depository, the "Grassy Knoll".
The first five floors of the building have been retrofitted for use as an office building; the sixth and seventh floors are open to the public (for an admission charge) as a museum of the assassination which is called The Sixth Floor Museum.
External links
- The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza (http://www.jfk.org/)
- Murder Perch to Museum: A History of the Texas School Book Depository (http://www.jfkassassination.net/organ4.htm)
- Dealey Plaza Cam - a view from the sixth floor window (http://www.earthcam.com/jfk/)
- Map of the location (http://maps.yahoo.com/maps_result?ed=WrsV3Op_0TqOS48pzp5px3HkOQ--&csz=Dallas%2C+TX&country=us&new=1&name=&qty=)