Texas School Book Depository

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The Texas School Book Depository is the former name of a seven-floor building located on Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas (USA). Its address is 411 Elm Street, Dallas, TX 75202-3317 and is located on the corner of Elm and Houston Streets at the western end of Dallas' Central Business District.

In 1963, the building, originally constructed in 1901, was in use as a multi-floor warehouse for the storage of school textbooks and related materials and an order-fulfillment center by a private business of the same name. On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine and chronically unemployed 24-year-old who was working as a holiday-rush temporary employee at the building, allegedly fired shots from the sixth floor of the Depository into the Presidential motorcade of John F. Kennedy, killing the President, who was rushed to nearby Parkland Memorial Hospital. The conclusion of law enforcement at the time, including the FBI, and later the Presidentially-appointed Warren Commission, was that Oswald acted alone; many conspiracy theorists dispute this. Most conspiracy theories involve a small grassy hill with trees not far from the front of the Depository, the "Grassy Knoll". Oswald's guilt was never proven or disproved, as he was murdered before standing trial.

Plaque on the Texas School Book Depository

In the late 1980s, the government of Dallas County purchased the building and renovated the lower five floors of the building for use as county government offices; the sixth and seventh floors are open to the public (for an admission charge) as a museum of the assassination, known as The Sixth Floor Museum.