Dealey Plaza: An Unintended Memorial |
Dealey Plaza: An Unintended Memorial
Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas was never meant to be a place of controversy.
Dan Bell | November 4, 2026
Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas was never meant to be a place of controversy.
Dallas was founded as a trading post near a passable ford over the Trinity River. It was a natural place for transacting commerce -- a place where water and trail traffic met and where a man could do some business. Dealey Plaza was a 1930s-40s WPA project that celebrated Dallas’s beginning as a place of commerce. It is fitting that Dealey Plaza is anchored at one end by Commerce Street as Dallas vaults into its next iteration of commerce as Y’all Street expands a few blocks away.
That commemoration changed on November 22, 1963. Dealey Plaza would never be the same. It would transform into the third major layer of history that happened at that spot.
That date was the reason for my elder brother and me to visit the site in 2026. Across the street from Dealey Plaza sits the former Texas School Book Depository and the JFK Sixth Floor Museum, which recounts the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
I was alive at the time of the 1963 slaying, but my brother actually lived it -- the difference is distinct. He remembers the event. I remember the aftermath.
The early 60s were barely a decade-and-a-half removed from the Second World War. Veterans had returned to start families, restart careers, and try to resume a normal life.
Nation-state conflict was not over, but it did morph into a “Cold War” where military escalation still existed in the form of proliferation of the advanced weapons technology that ended the prior conflict and where the balance of mutually assured destruction........