NRHP Nomination Form"This 7-story 80,000-square-foot red brick structure was built in 1901 by an unknown architect as a warehouse and showroom for the Rock Island Plow Company of Illinois; it replaced an 1898 structure that burned earlier the same year. The free-standing warehouse, about 100 feet square, stands on the northwest corner of Elm and Houston streets. Its main facade is on Elm Street extended (the pre-1936 Elm Street) with the eastern side on Houston Street. The west side faces the rail and switching yards. The north side faces spurs of the railyards connecting with Pacific Avenue, the primary east-west rail transit way through downtown Dallas.
The warehouse, though it possesses certain characteristics of early Chicago skyscraper construction, was built with Classical details, including arched windows on all floors except seven, with those on six being round arched on the central five of the seven bays of each facade; multi-story pilasters (running floors two to six) with limestone capitals, and other stylized features characteristic of early 20th-century warehouses. It has masonry loadbearing walls with interior heavy pine square milled beams supporting the flooring. The brick used was a formed common style. A dropped metal ceiling, offices, and show windows were built on the first floor. The seventh-floor corporate offices included a dropped metal ceiling, with interior brick walls stained maroon, and interior window trim painted dark green.
The Rock Island Plow Company and its successor, the Southern Rock Island Plow Company, retained ownership until 1937. In 1939, D.H. Byrd of Dallas purchased it and afterward leased it to a variety of tenants.
In 1963 it was being leased to the Texas School Book Depository Company, a private textbook brokerage firm not affiliated with the State of Texas, which nevertheless warehoused and supplied textbooks to Texas schools. The firm maintained corporate in the building, and used the upper floors for storing textbooks." Several textbook company representatives also leased office space.
In 1970 the Depository Company moved out and Byrd sold the building to Aubrey Mayhew of Nashville, Tennessee, who planned to tum it into a commercial attraction centering on the association with the Kennedy assassination. Mayhew defaulted on his payments two years later.
Between 1970 and 1977 the warehouse deteriorated; there was some discussion during the early 1970s of demolishing it, but the city refused to issue a demolition permit. In late 1977, Dallas County purchased the old warehouse from Byrd, using funds voted in a public bond election.
Between 1978 and 1988, the County renovated five floors and the basement for use as administrative offices and as the seat of County government. James Hendricks was in charge of the renovations, which took place in phases in 1978-81 and 1985-87. The fate of the sixth floor, which was sealed off and not exhibited to the public, remained an unsettled issue. A 1979 study funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities recommended that the floor be used for a major exhibition on the legacy and assassination of President Kennedy. The results were accepted and acted upon by the Dallas County Commissioners Court."