Dealey Plaza & Arts District Walk

Welcome to Dealey Plaza, a city park on the west edge of downtown Dallas. It's sometimes called the birthplace of Dallas. The land was donated by early philanthropist and businesswoman Sarah Horton Cockrell, and it was the site of the first home built in Dallas. The plaza was completed in 1940 as a Works Progress Administration project, where Main, Elm and Commerce Streets converge to pass under a railroad bridge known as the triple underpass.

It's named for George Bannerman Dealey, a civic leader and early publisher of The Dallas Morning News. On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated here as his motorcade passed along Elm Street. A white X on the Elm Street pavement usually marks the spot where he was fatally shot.

On the northwest side is the grassy knoll, and the pergola beside it has a marker honoring John Neely Bryan, the founder of Dallas. The plaza, the streets and the buildings visible from the assassination site became a National Historic Landmark district in 1993, on the 30th anniversary.

This seven-story building at 411 Elm Street is the former Texas School Book Depository, now home to the Sixth Floor Museum. Lee Harvey Oswald was working here as a temporary employee on November 22, 1963. The Warren Commission concluded that he fired three shots at President Kennedy's motorcade from a sixth floor window at the building's southeastern corner, and found no evidence that he was part of a conspiracy. The Rock Island Plow Company built a five-story building here for its Texas division in 1898.

After lightning struck in 1901 and it nearly burned to the ground, it was rebuilt in 1902 and expanded to seven stories. In 1963 the Texas School Book Depository Company used it as a warehouse for school textbooks. Dallas mayor Wes Wise saved the building from demolition, and Dallas County bought it in 1977 and turned the lower floors into county offices. On Presidents' Day 1989, the sixth floor opened to the public as the Sixth Floor Museum, with exhibits about the assassination.