Dealey Plaza

Dealey Plaza was Dallas's front door before it was the world's crime scene. The 3.07 acres at the west end of downtown — named in 1935 for Dallas News publisher George Dealey, landscaped around the Triple Underpass in 1936 — was built to funnel traffic between downtown and the highways. On November 22, 1963, the motorcade route ran through it: down Houston Street, the left turn onto Elm, the open limousine slowing through the plaza with the Book Depository above and the grassy knoll on the right.

The plaza keeps its integrity because the landmark nomination drew the boundary around what the cameras saw — the buildings and sightlines of 1963 preserved almost entire: the Depository with the sixth-floor window, the knoll's stockade fence, the triple underpass, the pergolas. The National Historic Landmark documentation is deliberately agnostic — it describes what was where, and explicitly declines to endorse or deny any theory of who fired.

The site became a landmark the way the century marked its wounds — dedicated as an NHL in 1993, thirty years to the day after the assassination, with Nellie Connally — who'd been in the limousine — unveiling the plaque. The X painted on Elm Street marks where the shots found the car; visitors stand on the knoll and look down the sightline, and the plaza goes on being the front door of Dallas and the wound of the country at once.

Dealey Plaza is the archive's sightline file — the 1935 civic plaza where November 22, 1963 happened, preserved almost intact around the Depository window and the knoll, landmarked thirty years to the day after.