You can go one of two ways with history. You can wipe it away. Pretend it never happened. Or you can embrace it, preserve it, try to understand it. It’s a dilemma the city of Dallas has faced before.
When the Texas School Book Depository lay dormant for years, some of the city’s more prominent citizens — Cowboys Coach Tom Landry and cosmetics queen Mary Kay Ash among them — spoke out loud for the former.
Both called for the building’s demolition. One of its sixth-floor windows had, after all, served as a sniper’s nest for the man who fired the shots that killed President John F. Kennedy on Elm Street in 1963. In the end, the opposing side won out, and The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza opened in 1989.
Not long ago, the UNT Dallas College of Law faced the same predicament. Established in 2014, the law school moved in 2019 to 106 S. Harwood St. — to the building known as Old City Hall — after a $71 million restoration.
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