An Evening in Dallas

I have long wanted to visit Dallas, Texas.  Although our company has a few offices in Texas, all of them are situated well outside of the city.  Thus, in the few times I had been in the area, I was not able to drive into Dallas to visit a particular site that I have long wanted to see.  The site I’m referring to is Dealey Plaza where on November 22, 1963, US President John F. Kennedy (JFK) was assassinated by a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald.

But this past Monday, an American friend at work who is a long-time Dallas resident, volunteered to give me a tour of the city.  Since summer days are quite long here, we decided to do the tour after the project team’s dinner.  He knew that I’ve long wanted to visit Dealey Plaza and that’s where he immediately took me.

It was around 7:30 p.m. when we got to the place.  There was still a fair amount of sunlight left.  The following  shows the picture I took as soon as I got off my friend’s car:

The red brick, seven-story building in the center of the picture above is called the Dallas County Administration Building.  However, back in 1963, this building was known as the Texas School Book Depository.  At the time, the building was named for a private business that used it as a multi-story warehouse for school textbooks.  For the purposes of this blog entry, I will refer to this building by its former name.  It was by this building’s sixth floor corner window where Lee Harvey Oswald took his position as he waited for the presidential motorcade to pass by.  The building is on Elm Street which intersects with Houston Street, the street I was on when I took the picture.

But before I proceed any further with the other photos in this entry, let me first share with you the following video clip from the Discovery Channel that detailed the moments leading to JFK’s assassination.  It also shows the building above and its immediate surroundings.

The building below is called the Old Red Courthouse.  It is now a museum but back in 1963, the building served as the Dallas County Courthouse.  I took the picture from Dealey Plaza.  The street in the foreground is Houston Street while the street at the side of the Old Red Courthouse is called Main Street.

The building above is shown about 12 seconds into the video.  The video showed President Kennedy’s open limousine driving down Main Street and then making a right into Houston Street, or to my left from where I stood above.  The courthouse’s stone arches can be clearly seen on film as the presidential limousine made its way past them.  This building is only a block away from the Texas School Book Depository. 

I walked a block closer to the Depository and took the following shot: 

President Kennedy was in an open car and waving to supporters when his car passed in front of this building.  I was standing on Elm Street when I took the picture below of part of the building’s facade:

From the picture above, you will see a black plaque or marker and a green sign below it at the lower right corner of the building’s facade.  Also note the corner window on the sixth floor that is in a half-open position.  The following picture shows both marker and sign up close:

As mentioned earlier, the building now houses Dallas County’s administrative offices.  However, the building’s sixth floor is now a museum dedicated to the JFK Assassination.  The museum’s logo shows seven horizontal bars to signify the number of floors in the building.  Except for the white bar that is second from the top, the rest of the bars are in the same color as the building’s bricks. 

The following is a close up shot of the marker.  Note how one vandal carved a line under the word “ALLEGEDLY” in the last paragraph of the inscription:

The following is a picture I took of the Sixth Floor Window.  It was from this window where Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shot that fatally wounded President Kennedy.  The window is in a simulated half-open position to show the way it looked on the day of the assassination.  There is actually a pane of glass within it to keep the entire window closed.

After taking the picture above, I turned to my left and took the following picture of a part of Elm Street on the left and the infamous Grassy Knoll on the right:

Another shot of the Grassy Knoll.  My friend told me that regardless of the time of day, there are always small groups of people present here, be they tourists or history buffs. 

The following is a shot of Elm Street and a triple underpass in the background.  President Kennedy’s limousine was on this stretch of Elm Street when he was fatally shot.  It is to be noted that at this particular point, Mr. Kennedy’s car was only two or three seconds away from entering the freeway that would have taken him to his next scheduled event for that day. 

Below was the last shot I took of both Elm Street and the Grassy Knoll.  Again, one can see from it how close JFK’s car was to the underpass and the freeway that could have saved his life. 

Just a few other things about this site. 

My photos failed to capture it but aside from the sad event that took place here many years ago, this part of Dallas’s West End District is also a rather lonely place to visit especially in the evenings.  There are quite a number of old warehouses and office buildings in the area; a number of them date back to the 19th Century; a number of them have  long been abandoned and unused; and a number are in a state of decay and/or disrepair. 

There are some nice government buildings like the Old Red Courthouse but a majority of the buildings in this area are all either for office or commercial use.  I didn’t see any condominium buildings or residential apartments in the immediate vicinity of the Depository.  In the evening hour that I was there, I saw very few people on the streets.  It is even a safe bet for me to say that  the ones I caught in my photos above made up the majority of the people who were present in the area during that time.  Thus, this section of Dallas literally becomes a ghost town after people leave their offices for home at the end of the workday.

The Philippines also figured briefly in Lee Harvey Oswald’s troubled personal history.  He joined the US Marines when he was 18 and was a trained sniper.  His Marine unit was stationed in the Philippines from late November 1957 to about March 1958.   He spent time in both Subic Bay in Olongapo and Corregidor during those months.   (Source:  “The Missing Chapter:  Lee Harvey Oswald in the Far East” by Jack R. Swike)

But even if I didn’t end up staying long, I’m glad that I was finally able to make this trip.  On a personal level, this is a place I had wanted to visit ever since I was child.  I learned about the JFK assassination from my parents and through a book they gave me as a gift.  Like many people of their generation, they spoke highly of JFK.  They admired his intelligence, charisma and idealism.  Thus, in a sentimental way, I also made this trip for them.  Aside from those, the history buff in me wanted to be there because it was a site where history was made.  It was a place where an assassination profoundly changed our world and maybe sadly, not for the better.