Dallas Creates Kennedy Memorial on Oswald’s 6th-Floor Sniping Site

Here is the building at 411 Elm St., old and dowdy and etched in the American consciousness. The eyes instinctively move upward and stop at the sixth floor, corner window.

Lee Harvey Oswald waited here for the motorcade to pass. This is where he pulled the rifle trigger and killed President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.

In a matter of seconds, everything was turned upside down. Camelot was gone and so was America’s innocence. Dallas was branded the “city of hate,” a stigma that would last for decades. And this frumpy old building, then known as the Texas School Book Depository, was catapulted into infamy, doomed to suffer stares and pointed fingers from the thousands who have stood on the grassy knoll across the street in Dealey Plaza.

They have only looked from a distance, though.

In the years since the Kennedy assassination, only a relative handful of people has been allowed to stand where Oswald stood.

That is changing, although amid some controversy. By the end of 1988, the sixth floor of the building will be opened after 25 years, housing an exhibit depicting Kennedy’s life and death. Those who favor it say it will be done tastefully and that it is high time people see “The Sixth Floor,” as the exhibit will be called.

“It fills the painting out,” said home builder David Fox, one of the exhibit’s chief fund-raisers. “There’s something missing out there, and that’s access to the sixth floor.”

‘Assassin’s Museum’

Those who oppose it say it will be an “assassin’s museum” and that the planned outside elevator to the sixth floor will be a blight on the landscape of the historic district that surrounds the building.

“I don’t think we ought to be glamorizing some assassin’s act,” said Robert Hawk, a member of the task force that oversees the renovation of the adjacent West End historic district. “In my view, that is just exactly what it does.”

However, proponents clearly predominate, marking in some ways a coming of age for this city. Enough time has passed since Dallas’ darkest day. No longer is this the same place that had to shoulder the blame for Kennedy’s death, as if somehow an entire city was responsible for the act of one man.

And no longer is there a movement, as there has been in years past, to tear down the building and be done with the memory, the “mark of shame,” as historian A. C. Greene described it.

Houses County Offices

Since being purchased by Dallas County in 1981, the building has been restored and is used as the county’s administration building, with government workers occupying the first five floors. But the sixth floor has remained locked, and only in the last few months have there been enough momentum and money to begin the $3.5-million project.

The final impetus came when newly elected County Judge Lee Jackson, in his inaugural address last January, said the opening of the sixth floor was his first priority. In Texas, a county judge presides over lower criminal courts and is the presiding officer of the county commissioners.

“I said I considered it a major piece of unfinished business, that the county had started down a path when it bought the building that had to be completed in some way,” Jackson said.

The county government then voted to issue $2 million in revenue bonds, which will be repaid from admission fees. The remaining $1.5 million will be raised through private donations, and some of the biggest names in Dallas, including political kingmaker Jess Hay and home builder Fox, are spearheading the drive.

500,000 Visitors Expected

If predictions are accurate, 500,000 people will visit the exhibit annually, starting next fall. And, if the guest book in the lobby of the building is any indication, the opening will be welcomed by those who come to view the spot where Kennedy was killed. There is precious little to mark the event--a bronze plaque in Dealey Plaza and brief mention on another attached to the building itself. The cenotaph commemorating Kennedy’s death is two blocks away.

“Can’t believe Dallas pretends it didn’t happen,” wrote John Lemilar of London in the guest book. “Is there no proper memorial?”

“Should be more of a memorial,” wrote Mr. and Mrs. William Beane of Palatine, Ill.

Lou Kartsonis of San Diego, Calif., put it even more succinctly: “Open 6th floor.”

Conover Hunt, the director of the project since a panel of consultants was formed nine years ago, was standing on the sixth floor, her own private domain. The plywood floors have been cemented and duct work is in place, part of the initial preparations for the exhibit.

“In 24 years, we haven’t seen a waning of interest,” she said. “There is a mandate to give the public its history.”

In one corner, behind a chain link fence, is the spot where Oswald’s rifle and clipboard were found. In the middle of the 8,500-square-foot room is what is left of the lunchroom in which Oswald was first questioned. There is also a sign that says, “Texas School Book Depository,” but it is, in fact, a fake, a movie prop. The real sign is in another warehouse. The now famous Hertz car rental sign that was once atop the building is in the basement. Neither will be used initially in the exhibit.

And, over in the far corner, also behind fencing, is the spot where Oswald watched and waited.

Boxes of Magazines

Hunt slipped a key into the lock and opened the gate. The sides of the cubicle were piled with boxes containing commemorative magazines printed on the 20th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. Unlike the rest of the floor, the original plywood sheets cover the corner. And, outside, the oak tree that barely showed in 1963 pictures now blocks the view of most of the roadway. Pieces of brick by the window have been chipped away by souvenir hunters who gained access to the sixth floor when the building was privately owned.

In the exhibit, this corner will be glassed off from the rest of the floor. Boxes will be stacked, just as they were in 1963. But Hunt said Oswald’s gun would not be on display, in the interest of keeping the exhibit focused on Kennedy.

There will be multimedia presentations that include looks at the investigations, the conspiracy theories and the legacy of the assassination. Hunt said the legacy will be the most difficult and, perhaps, the most controversial.

“We have a group of academics working on that,” she said. “I don’t even know what they are going to conclude.”

60-Foot Elevator Shaft

Hunt showed the spot where visitors riding up the 60-foot elevator shaft would enter the exhibit. She said having the elevators inside the building just wouldn’t have worked, that having so many people in the lobby of the old building would have disrupted the county’s work.

She talked about how, in some ways, 25 years was a long time for the sixth floor to be neglected. But, in historical terms, it was only the blink of an eye, and maybe a needed one to ease the pain and view it all as history.

“I think a quarter century is a nice period for that resting,” she said. “To the new generation, it is history. They not only don’t know the basic facts but have very little understanding of what it meant.”