The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza is located on the sixth floor of the Dallas County Administration Building (formerly the Texas School Book Depository). The museum examines the life, times, death, and legacy of President John F. Kennedy. It is located at the very spot from which Lee Harvey Oswald, according to four government investigations, killed Kennedy. The museum's exhibition area uses historic films, photographs, artifacts and interpretive displays to document the events of the assassination, the reports by government investigations that followed, and the historical legacy of the national tragedy. The museum is self-sufficient in funding, relying solely on donations and ticket sales. It rents the space from the County of Dallas, Texas. The museum was founded by the Dallas County Historical Foundation. It opened its doors on Presidents' Day, February 20, 1989. The museum is located in the old Texas School Book Depository building, at the intersection of Elm and Houston Streets on Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, the location from which the Warren Commission found that Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy on November 22, 1963. A museum webcam features a live view from the sniper spot. In December 1999, the Zapruder family donated copyright to the Zapruder film to The Sixth Floor Museum, along with one of the first-generation copies made on November 22, 1963, and other copies of the film. The Zapruder family no longer retains any copyrights to the film, which are now controlled entirely by the museum. On February 19, 2007, previously unreleased 8 mm film footage of Kennedy's motorcade donated to the museum by George Jefferies and his son-in-law was shown publicly for the first time. The 40-second film, silent and in color, showed the motorcade before the assassination, as well as part of Dealey Plaza the following day. Jefferies film was described as capturing "a beaming Jacqueline Kennedy", as well as showing Kennedy's suit jacket bunched-up in the back at that moment, about two minutes before Kennedy entered Dealey Plaza. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Floor_Museum_at_Dealey_Plaza 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.[1] 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.[2][1] Under Byrd's ownership the building remained empty until 1940, when it was leased by a grocery wholesaler, the John Sexton & Co.[2] 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.[2] 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." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_School_Book_Depository

• published: 11 Oct 2014
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