This point sits inside the historic district where Dealey Plaza now stands, a city park at the west end of downtown Dallas.
Last reviewed 16 October 2026 · A three-minute read · 1839–2025
The short answer
Dealey Plaza in Dallas is the city park where President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed on November 22, 1963, as his motorcade passed along Elm Street. Built between 1934 and 1940 on ground once a trading post and later a plow warehouse, it was named a National Historic Landmark in 1993.
Dallas, TX, USA -- Dealey Plaza and the Texas School Book Depository, in November 1969, site of the assassination of John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963 — 2012 · MARELBU · CC BY 3.0
1841 to 1940
A trading post became an Art Deco city park
Dealey Plaza is a small city park in Dallas, the spot where three streets, Main Street, Commerce Street, and Elm Street, funnel together toward a railroad underpass. Before any of that, this ground was raw riverbank. In 1841, John Neely Bryan set up a trading post and ferry crossing near the Trinity River, close to where the plaza sits now. John Neely Bryan sold his claim for fifty dollars in 1849 and the settlement he started grew into Dallas.
By the 1880s, a wagon shop run by a Frenchman named Maxime Guillot stood on part of the site. In 1894, Phil L. Mitchell, who ran an Illinois plow company, bought the land. His company built a five-story warehouse at Elm and Houston Streets in 1898. Lightning struck it and burned it down in 1901. A new seven-story building went up on the same foundation that same year. It would later be called the Texas School Book Depository.
The city moved the Trinity River away from downtown in 1928, clearing ground in front of that building for a park. Dallas built Dealey Plaza between 1934 and 1940, laying out Art Deco colonnades and reflecting pools as a public works project. The city named it for George Bannerman Dealey, longtime publisher of The Dallas Morning News, who had pushed for the redesign of this part of downtown. A twelve-foot bronze statue of Dealey, made by sculptor Felix de Weldon, was added to the plaza in 1949.
1937 to 1961
A warehouse changed trades before storing schoolbooks
The seven-story building at Elm and Houston kept changing hands. In 1937, a new tenant renamed it the Perfection-Aire Building for its air-conditioning business. From 1941 to 1961, a Chicago grocery wholesaler called John Sexton & Co. Used it as a warehouse. In 1963, a new tenant leased the building: the Texas School Book Depository Company, which stored and shipped school textbooks.
November 22, 1963
Kennedy was shot as his motorcade passed
Just before 12:30 p.m. On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy's motorcade turned onto Elm Street, heading toward the underpass, with Kennedy on his way to give a speech at the Dallas Trade Mart. Shots rang out. Kennedy was hit and died a short time later at Parkland Hospital.
The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald fired from a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository, the same building that had stored plow equipment, then air conditioners, then grocery stock, then schoolbooks. Conspiracy theories have challenged that finding ever since, pointing to the grassy knoll above the plaza or a window in the Dal-Tex Building across the street as possible second firing positions.
A clothing manufacturer named Abraham Zapruder stood on a concrete pedestal near the plaza's pergola and filmed the motorcade on his home movie camera. His 26-second film became the most studied piece of evidence in the case.
1970 to 1989
An empty depository became a county building and museum
The Texas School Book Depository Company moved out in 1970, leaving the seven-story building empty. Through the 1970s, Dallas argued over whether to tear it down. The city council froze demolition permits to keep the question open, and the building survived the decade standing vacant.
Dallas County bought it in 1977 and spent four years restoring it, returning the outside to its 1901 look. The county dedicated it as the Dallas County Administration Building in March 1981, with offices on the first five floors. On Presidents' Day in 1989, the Dallas County Historical Foundation opened the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza on the floor above, built for visitors who kept coming to ask about the assassination.
1993 to now
Dealey Plaza was named a national historic landmark
On October 12, 1993, the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination, the federal government named Dealey Plaza a National Historic Landmark. The designation covers the plaza, the depository building, and the street rights-of-way visible from the assassination site.
The museum grew over the following years, adding visitor space in 1997 and a seventh floor of exhibits in 2002. Dallas County eventually moved its offices out of the building, shifting government business to the nearby Records Building by 2022, leaving the lower floors for county use and the upper floors to the museum.
Dealey Plaza itself has stayed close to its 1963 look: the colonnades, the reflecting pools, and the white "X" painted on Elm Street marking roughly where the fatal shot struck. A security scare briefly shut down the plaza in recent years, when a guard found a suspicious briefcase near the memorial and police closed the surrounding streets while the bomb squad checked it. In March 2025, the federal government released tens of thousands of pages of long-sealed JFK assassination files, drawing visitors back to the plaza to react to what the documents did, and did not, reveal.
Dealey Plaza today is a quiet city park, its 1940s colonnades and pools largely unchanged since the day a president died here.
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Modern
near the JFK memorial, Houston and Main Streets
Dallas Police sent the bomb squad to Dealey Plaza after a security guard found a suspicious briefcase near the JFK memorial, close to Houston and Main Streets.
In 1839 Tennessee lawyer John Neely Bryan chose this high bluff and shallow ford on the Trinity River for a trading post, returned in 1841 to find few Native people left, and platted a town he called Dallas.
Jane Elkins, enslaved and accused without real defense in the 1853 bludgeoning death of Andrew Wisdom, was convicted by an all-white jury in six days and hanged outside the courthouse on May 27, 1853, the first woman legally hanged in Texas.
Alexander Cockrell, who bought the Dallas townsite from founder John Neely Bryan and built the city's bridge and sawmill, died on April 3, 1858, in an altercation over an unpaid debt.
After a fire destroyed most of downtown Dallas on July 8, 1860, a vigilance committee of 100 white men ordered all enslaved people in the city whipped, then hanged three enslaved men, Sam Smith, Patrick Jennings, and "Old Cato," without trial on July 24, 1860.
The fifth Dallas County courthouse, known as Old Red, was built between 1890 and 1892 in the Romanesque Revival style, after four earlier courthouses on the same ground burned or were replaced.
The five-story warehouse built here in 1898 for the Southern Rock Island Plow Company burned after being struck by lightning in 1901, and the surviving seven-story building that replaced it on the same foundation became the Texas School Book Depository.
near Main and Akard Streets, via the old county courthouse
On March 3, 1910, a mob pulled 60-year-old Allen Brooks from a courthouse hearing, threw him from a second-floor window, then dragged him half a mile down Main Street and hanged him from a telephone pole before an estimated 5,000 onlookers.
Dallas County bought this site in 1913 for a new jail and courts building, finished in 1915 with cells for 200 prisoners above two large district courtrooms.
Texas voters approved letting women serve on juries on November 2, 1954, and that November Adelyne Dransfield became one of the first female jury foremen in Dallas County.
President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed as his motorcade passed Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, with Lee Harvey Oswald firing from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository above.
In 1964 Jack Ruby stood trial in the east courtroom of the Dallas County Criminal Courts Building for killing Lee Harvey Oswald, the man accused of assassinating Kennedy.
Dealey Plaza was designated a National Historic Landmark district on October 12, 1993, the 30th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, to preserve the buildings visible from the shooting.
In March 2025 tens of thousands of pages on the Kennedy assassination were released at the direction of the Trump administration, drawing renewed attention to Dealey Plaza and the Sixth Floor Museum.
President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed there on November 22, 1963, as his motorcade passed along Elm Street, with Lee Harvey Oswald firing from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
What was here before Dealey Plaza was built?
The ground was raw riverbank where John Neely Bryan set up a trading post and ferry crossing in 1841. By the 1880s a wagon shop stood on part of the site, and in 1898 a five-story plow company warehouse was built at Elm and Houston Streets, later replaced by the building that became the Texas School Book Depository.
When was Dealey Plaza built?
Dallas built Dealey Plaza between 1934 and 1940 as a public works project, laying out Art Deco colonnades and reflecting pools, after the Trinity River was moved away from downtown in 1928.
What is the building where Oswald fired from now?
It became the Dallas County Administration Building in 1981 and, since Presidents' Day 1989, has housed the Sixth Floor Museum on the floor Oswald fired from.
Is Dealey Plaza a protected historic site?
Yes, Dealey Plaza was designated a National Historic Landmark on October 12, 1993, the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination, covering the plaza, the depository building, and the surrounding streets visible from the shooting.
Who filmed the Kennedy assassination at Dealey Plaza?
Clothing manufacturer Abraham Zapruder stood on a concrete pedestal near the plaza's pergola and filmed the motorcade on his home movie camera, producing a 26-second film that became the most studied piece of evidence in the case.
