Dealey Plaza

Dealey Plaza /ˈdiːliː/ is a city park in the West End Historic District of downtown Dallas, Texas. It is sometimes called the "birthplace of Dallas". It was also the location of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. The Dealey Plaza Historic District was named a National Historic Landmark on the 30th anniversary of the assassination, to preserve Dealey Plaza, street rights-of-way, buildings, and structures by the plaza visible from the assassination site, that have been identified as witness locations or as possible locations for the assassin.
The Dealey Plaza Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1993 and designated a National Historic Landmark the same year. The former county courthouse is individually listed on the National Register and is also designated a State Antiquities Landmark (SAL) and a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark (RTHL). Additional properties within the district are also RTHLs. The following are contributing properties and other significant buildings within the historic district.:
Dealey Plaza and all of the contributing buildings are part of the Westend Historic District (NRHP #78002918, 1978; Dallas Landmark Historic District #H/2, 1975) with the single exception of the U.S. Post Office Terminal Annex which is outside of the boundaries of that district. The Kennedy Memorial and Plaza is the only contributing property not in existence at the time of the assassination nor in view of its site.
Dealey Plaza was built on land donated by early Dallas philanthropist and businesswoman Sarah Horton Cockrell. It was the location of the first home built in Dallas, which also became the first courthouse and post office, the first store, and the first fraternal lodge. It is sometimes called the "birthplace of Dallas".
The plaza was completed in 1940 as a WPA project on the west edge of downtown Dallas, where three streets converge, Main Street, Elm Street, and Commerce Street, to pass under a railroad bridge known locally as the "triple underpass."
The plaza is named for George Bannerman Dealey (1859–1946), a civic leader and early publisher of The Dallas Morning News, who had campaigned for the area's revitalization. Monuments outlining the plaza honor previous prominent Dallas residents, and predate President John F. Kennedy's visit by many years. The monument honoring President Kennedy, in the form of a cenotaph, is one block away.
Dealey Plaza is bounded on the south, east, and north sides by buildings at least 100 feet (30 m) tall. One of those buildings is the former Texas School Book Depository building, from which, both the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded, Lee Harvey Oswald fired a rifle that killed President Kennedy. 30 minutes after the shooting, Kennedy died at Parkland Memorial Hospital. There is also a grassy knoll on the northwest side of the plaza. At the plaza's west perimeter is a triple underpass beneath a railroad bridge, under which the motorcade raced after the shots were fired.
Today, the plaza is typically visited daily by tourists. The Sixth Floor Museum now occupies the top two floors of the seven-story former Book Depository. Since 1989, more than six million people have visited the museum.
The National Park Service designated Dealey Plaza a National Historic Landmark District on November 22, 1993, the 30th anniversary of the JFK assassination, roughly encompassing the area between Pacific Avenue, Market and Jackson streets and the former railroad tracks. Therefore, nothing of significance has been torn down or rebuilt in the immediate area. A small plaque commemorating the assassination is located in the plaza.
Visitors to Dealey Plaza today will see street lights and street signs that were in use in 1963. Some have been moved to different locations and others removed entirely. Buildings immediately surrounding the plaza have not been changed since 1963, presenting a stark contrast to the ultra-modern Dallas skyline that rises behind it.
Over more than half-a-century, Elm Street has been resurfaced several times, street lane stripes have been relocated, and sidewalk lamp posts have been moved and added. Trees, bushes and hedges have grown, and some traffic sign locations have been changed, relocated or removed. On November 22, 2003, the 40th anniversary of the assassination, the city of Dallas approved construction project plans to restore Dealey Plaza to its exact appearance on November 22, 1963. The first phase of the restoration, which cost $700,000 for repair work and plumbing along Houston Streets, was completed on November 22, 2008, the 45th anniversary.
The grassy knoll is a small, sloping hill inside the plaza that became of interest following the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy. The knoll was above Kennedy and to his right (west and north).
This north grassy knoll is adjacent to the former Texas School Book Depository building along the Elm Street abutment side street to the northeast, Elm Street, and a sidewalk to the south, a parking lot to the north and east and a railroad bridge atop the triple underpass convergence of Commerce, Main and Elm streets to the west.
Located near the north grassy knoll on November 22, 1963, there were several witnesses, three large traffic signposts, four sidewalk lamp posts, the John Neely Bryan north pergola concrete structure including its two enclosed shelters, a tool shed, one concrete wall 3.3 feet (1 m) high connected to each of the pergola shelters; ten tall, wide, low-hanging live oak trees; a five-foot-high (1.5 m), wooden, cornered, stockade fenceline measured at approximately 169 feet (52 m) long; six street curb sewer openings, their sewer manholes and their interconnecting large pipes; and several 2 to 6 feet (60 to 180 cm) tall bushes, trees and hedges.
The term "grassy knoll" was first used to describe this area by reporter Albert Merriman Smith, known as Smitty, of UPI, who was riding in the press "pool car" following 150 to 200 yards (140 to 180 m) behind Kennedy's car and had use of the car's radio-telephone. In his second dispatch from the car just 25 minutes after the shooting, he said, "Some of the Secret Service agents thought the gunfire was from an automatic weapon fired to the right rear of the president's car, probably from a grassy knoll to which police rushed." These words were then repeated on national television by CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite in his second CBS bulletin on the shooting.
Smitty, who was the main UPI reporter covering the presidential motorcade and was seated in the front seat of the sixth car known as the White House Pool car or the wire car, used a radiotelephone to file his report with the UPI office when shots had been fired at President Kennedy. Smith popularized the term "grassy knoll" and received the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.
After he filed his report, which took several minutes, the radiotelephone went dead before the main Associated Press reporter Jack Bell, who was seated in the back seat near Smith, could file his own report. Robert MacNeil, a White House reporter for NBC News who exited one of the two press buses immediately after the shots were fired, ran with some police officers up the grassy knoll and over the fence but found no one there. He then entered the nearby book depository building to find a telephone with which to file his report.
As the first shot was fired, Mary Moorman, who was with her friend Jean Hill as the two watched the motorcade pass, took a Polaroid picture of the grassy knoll with President Kennedy in the second car in the foreground: Moorman and Hill were close, only about 10 to 15 feet (3 to 5 m) away. Abraham Zapruder's film contains footage of the two women near Kennedy's presidential motorcade but no footage of the grassy knoll. The Associated Press used a copy of Moorman's Polaroid photo in its reporting of the events at Dealey Plaza during JFK's assassination.
Out of the 104 Dealey Plaza earwitness reports published by the Commission and elsewhere, 56 recorded testimony that they remembered hearing at least one shot fired from either the Depository or near the Houston/Elm Street intersection. Thirty-five witnesses recorded testimony of at least one shot fired from either the grassy knoll or the triple underpass. Eight stated that they heard shots being fired from elsewhere, and five testified that the shots were fired from two different directions.