The Sixth Floor Museum: A Historical Tribute to JFK

The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, located inside the former Texas School Book Depository building, opened as The Sixth Floor exhibit on February 20, 1989. At the time of the Kennedy assassination in 1963, the warehouse, located at 411 Elm Street in downtown Dallas, was occupied by the Texas School Book Depository Company, which distributed school textbooks in Texas and surrounding states. After the Depository Company moved out of the building in 1970, controversy arose regarding whether the structure should be demolished, as it was considered by many to be a symbol of the stigma that befell Dallas in the wake of the assassination. The building entered a brief period of private ownership, and efforts were made to develop a for-profit Kennedy memorial display. An arson attempt in 1972 exacerbated the public outcry to tear down the depository. The building was spared when it was purchased by Dallas County as part of a 1977 bond package. In a project spearheaded by Dallas County public works director C. Judson Shook, the lower floors of the warehouse were extensively renovated and reopened in 1981 as the seat of Dallas County government.

Founding and Opening of the Museum

Recognizing the historical significance of the sixth floor, where key evidence was found following the assassination, Shook asked Dallas preservation activist Lindalyn Adams to champion the development of an educational display. Adams and Conover Hunt, a historian from Virginia, led a twelve-year effort to create The Sixth Floor exhibit. The controversial project met with local resistance, fundraising difficulties, and lengthy delays. Fundraising efforts were stymied in part by the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan by former Dallas resident John Hinckley, Jr., in 1981. Working with Washington, D.C., interpretative planning and design firm Staples and Charles, Conover Hunt led a content development team of twenty-seven individuals, ranging from academic historians to amateur assassination researchers. Dallas documentarians Allen and Cynthia Mondell produced six short films for the exhibit, including The Legacy, hosted by Walter Cronkite.

Opened on the sixth floor on Presidents Day 1989, the exhibition John F. Kennedy and the Memory of a Nation explores the life, times, death, and legacy of President John F. Kennedy. The narrative, told through text, photographs, and artifacts, begins with the culture of the early 1960s and briefly chronicles the role of the Kennedy White House during rapidly changing times. Shifting to President Kennedy’s trip to Texas, the weekend of November 22, 1963, is explored in detail, including the arrest and shooting of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and the president’s funeral in Washington, D.C. The latter half of the exhibit focuses on assassination evidence and eyewitness testimony, although no conclusions are drawn regarding the validity of the Warren Commission’s findings that Oswald acted as a lone assassin or the possibility of a conspiracy. Two key evidentiary areas, the “sniper’s perch” in the southeast corner of the sixth floor as well as the location where a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle was discovered in the northwest corner, were recreated based on crime scene photographs and protected by glass enclosures.

Museum Development and Expansion

The original exhibit on the sixth floor has experienced updates and enhancements over the years, including the installation of additional artifacts, a live webcam, interactive touch-screen displays overlooking Dealey Plaza, and new short films in The Legacy theater. Notable artifacts on display on the sixth floor as of 2025 include an Associated Press teletype machine like those that relayed news of the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald’s wedding ring, the hat worn by Jack Ruby when he shot Oswald in the basement of Dallas police headquarters, a collection of cameras used by photographers in Dealey Plaza, military artifacts from the Kennedy funeral, and—on long-term loan from the National Archives—the scale-model of the plaza prepared by the FBI for use by the Warren Commission in 1964.

The Sixth Floor’s first executive directors, Bob Hays (1989–93) and Jeff West (1994–2004), oversaw an increase in visitation following the Oliver Stone film, JFK (1991), as well as the development of archival collections and an ongoing oral history project and the gradual transition from an exhibition to an accredited museum. In 1992 the Sixth Floor Museum welcomed its one millionth visitor. An expansion of the visitors center in 1997 provided opportunities for temporary exhibits that reflected current events, including the Elián González controversy in 2000 and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A significant expansion, completed in 2002, added 9,000 square feet of exhibit and programming space on the seventh floor. The Seventh Floor Gallery has hosted a diverse series of national touring exhibits and in-house productions, including partnerships with the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and the Museum of the Moving Image in New York and traveling shows from such institutions as the National Archives and the Smithsonian Institution. Drawing from its collections, the museum has created temporary exhibitions that explored the role of Dallas law enforcement during the assassination weekend, civil rights and social activism, early childhood responses to the assassination, and art inspired by President Kennedy and the assassination. The Seventh Floor Gallery also provides space for public and educational programming. Following another expansion in 2010, the museum’s reading room, which overlooks Dealey Plaza, and media room opened on the ground floor. The museum contributes to the interpretation and support of the Dealey Plaza National Historic Landmark District and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza. Accessible on the museum’s website since 2021, a Dealey Plaza interactive guide provides narrated tours, maps, and stories that explore the history of Dealey Plaza and the surrounding area.

The Sixth Floor Museum Today

As of 2025 the museum’s collections include more than 90,000 items related to the assassination, the legacy of President Kennedy, and the culture of the 1960s. Significant holdings include hundreds of hours of early 1960s radio and television broadcasts, representing Dallas ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliate stations as well as independent station KTVT-TV. The collection also includes thousands of camera negatives by staff photographers for the Dallas Times Herald, the Dallas Morning News, and the Fort Worth Press. Other collection highlights include a number of 8mm color home movies, amateur and professional photographs, original documents and manuscripts, scrapbooks and journals, newspapers and magazines, and more than 2,500 audio-visual oral histories. In addition to significant imagery chronicling President Kennedy’s visit to Texas in 1963, the museum holds the copyright to three of the four known home movies that captured the fatal shot on film, including the Abraham Zapruder film. Under CEO Nicola Longford (2005–) and with the goal of reaching a broader, more diverse audience, the museum has increased public programming and education initiatives with sustained community engagement that explores relevant issues within the context of 1960s history and culture. Local partnerships, lectures, panel discussions, gallery talks, performances, concerts, and community programming contribute to this ongoing effort.