They’re Gonna Do WHAT to Dealey Plaza?!?

[Lori Spencer]

If you’ll pardon the expression, this made my head explode 🤯. I’m absolutely hopping mad about this! 😡 🤬 

The Dallas Morning News (who else?) commissioned architects to do a TOTAL RE-DESIGN of Dealey Plaza that will forever change this historic landmark — and not for the better! 
 

If this project goes forward as proposed, the Dealey Plaza we have known for nearly a century will be unrecognizable. 
 

Get ready for the NEW Dealey Plaza! 
 

Photos of the proposed makeover and more info: Dealey Plaza Re-Design Plan: The Dallas Morning News

The article stresses how they must get rid of the “tawdry graffiti” like the X on Elm St., and run off the conspiracy riff-raff. Bad crowd, you know… making the Plaza unsafe for tourists who wish to get the official sanitized version of what happened at the 6th Floor Museum. 
 

More destruction of evidence; of memory; of history; of truth. 

 

Edited November 21, 2022 by Lori Spencer

[Lori Spencer]

The article did have some interesting vintage photos of Dealey Plaza I’d never seen before.

 

Got a chuckle out of this DMN front page coverage of the Triple Underpass dedication ceremony of May 2, 1936. Some anonymous guy dubbed “Bonehead” by the headline writer apparently decided to christen the new underpass with a bottle of ketchup, which sprayed everyone in the general vicinity. 😝 He was dragged off in handcuffs…

 

[Tom Gram]

11 minutes ago, Lori Spencer said:

The article did have some interesting vintage photos of Dealey Plaza I’d never seen before.

 

Got a chuckle out of this DMN front page coverage of the Triple Underpass dedication ceremony of May 2, 1936. Some anonymous guy dubbed “Bonehead” by the headline writer apparently decided to christen the new underpass with a bottle of ketchup, which sprayed everyone in the general vicinity. 😝 He was dragged off in handcuffs…

 

This isn’t approved yet right?  We need to do everything we can to block this travesty. I bet most JFK researchers will feel the same way - regardless of their opinions on the case - so hopefully this is an issue we can all unite on. 

[Lori Spencer]

THIS MUST BE STOPPED! 🛑 

[Sandy Larsen]

4 minutes ago, Lori Spencer said:

THIS MUST BE STOPPED! 🛑 

 

I agree!

 

[Paul Cummings]

Well count me in the minority. 

[Joseph Backes]

I created a thread on this.  But, the more people who learn about this and get outraged by it the better.  

We don't need this.  Bowers Tower would be gone forever and the railroad area behind the knoll would be drastically changed.  

Closing down Dealey Plaza to traffic is fine. Close Commerce, Main, and Elm, and Houston Street. That's fine.  

But, no amphitheater, no overlook, and no official pool marker on or in Elm Street. Leave the site alone. Let it look like it

did in 1963.  

 

Edited November 21, 2022 by Joseph Backes

[Steve Thomas]

Are they are going to have a Jumbotron and sell popcorn?

Steve Thomas

[Matthew Koch]

This article has an audio file about the redesign.  

Edit* In the audio he makes a great point that there is no bike lane, lol!

 

 

 

 

https://www.tpr.org/business/2022-11-11/can-dealey-plaza-in-dallas-really-be-improved-this-new-plan-says-yes-and-heres-how

The Dallas Morning News recently commissioned and released a proposal to significantly overhaul Dealey Plaza. The plaza includes:

• The JFK assassination site
• The memorial to the News' own founder, G. B. Dealey
• Martyr's Park, which commemorates three Black men lynched by Dallasites in 1860
• The Triple Underpass, which opened in 1936 as an art moderne-ish "gateway" to downtown. 

These days, with all that jumbled together, "Dealey Plaza doesn't work," said the Morning News architecture critic Mark Lamster. "It's dangerous and nonfunctional and it doesn't work symbolically for the city. I think it's due to be rethought."

Lamster argued the time is right for a redo because of the ongoing development of the Trinity River Park — aka Harold Simmons Park — which, as part of the Trinity River Corridor Plan, will span some 200 acres inside the floodway downtown, complete with trails and overlooks.

All of that will be just across from Dealey Plaza and downtown — but also across I-35, the DART rail line, the Frank Crowley Courts Building, the Lew Sterrett Justice Center, the Dallas County Sheriff's Department and EZ-Out Bail Bonds.

But, Lamster said, "the city's changing. We are building a $250 million park in the Trinity, and Dealey Plaza is the primary route from downtown to that park. There needs to be access to that park, to the Justice Center, to Martyr's Park. And we need to have cycling paths, which we don't have at all. We don't have any serious accommodation for pedestrians, either. And this is going to be a primary route from downtown to what's going to be one of the city's principal attractions."

 

Stoss Landscape Urbanism

The proposed overlook would start from behind the Grassy Knoll in Dealey Plaza, then rise above the Triple Underpass to provide views of downtown Dallas on one side and the Trinity River on the other. 

 

Which is one reason the proposed additions include an elevated overlook, a promontory that rises out of the parking lot and trainyard behind the Grassy Knoll and becomes a viewing platform above the Triple Underpass. It'll permit vista views of Dealey, West Dallas, downtown, the bridges, the river.

The idea for the plan originated, Lamster said, in a discussion with Chris Reed of Stoss Landscape Urbanism, a Boston firm that was the winner of 2013's The Connected City Design Challenge, a first attempt to overcome the clogged infrastructure that barricades the Trinity from downtown. Lamster brought in two other firms to help with the re-think: MPdL Studio of Princeton and Delineator of Dallas.

Dallas has long had a vexed relationship with Dealey Plaza — for obvious reasons. Stephen Fagin's book, "Assassination and Commemoration: JFK, Dallas and the Sixth Floor Museum," details the many years the city spent wishing the Texas School Book Depository — the perch Lee Harvey Oswald used to shoot President Kennedy in Dealey Plaza — would go away, get bought up and bulldozed. Or maybe just forgotten.

In its defense, no city before Dallas had ever created a museum marking something as wounding and horrific as an internationally witnessed presidential assassination. In the early '60s, Ford's Theater in Washington, D. C., where Abraham Lincoln was shot, was more or less still deteriorating. In Buffalo, where President William McKinley was murdered in 1906, there's just a plaque on a rock.

 

Stoss Landscape Urbanism

Houston Street would get stripes, Main Street goes one way and Elm Street becomes a pedestrian walk.

 

So there was no model to follow for a memorial or historical preservation. And the potential embarrasments were huge: It could make Dallas look clumsy or banal. It could seem to try too hard to paint over the city's failings. It could be charged with tastelessly cashing in on a tragedy.

So, as Fagin shows, it took more than 30 years, but it was a little short of remarkable that the city got so much right in the creation of the Sixth Floor Museum — like preserving the integrity of the historic building while providing public access to it. The Sixth Floor became a model for other memorials — and remains a significant site for many visitors today. Nearly 60 years after President Kennedy's death, one can still see people tearing up in the museum.

But one of the few things the city didn't get right was the Sixth Floor's location. Not much could be done about that, and as Lamster said, there's little that's right about Dealey Plaza.

How'd that happen?

• Over the years, the 'gateway to downtown Dallas' got crowbarred together with other functions — or the area's functions were transformed. This is where the city started — as a trading post along the Trinity River — but this is also where Dallas, in a monumental civil engineering project, moved that river (rather than move the city) because of the Trinity's habit of flooding and nearly destroying Dallas.

 

• And this was where, once upon a time, more than half-a-dozen rail lines roared and clanged through the West End, sending cotton up north. Instead, today, there's the eternally stalled tangle on I-35 — and all of the frustrated motorists who use the Triple Underpass to escape that jam to roar across downtown or find another access to I-30.

 

 

Stoss Landscape Urbanism

A proposed redesign of Dealey Plaza includes an amphitheater for visitors to contemplate the JFK assassination site as well as paths leading to the Triple Underplass, Martyrs' Park and the new overlook providing views of downtown and the Trinity

 

So here are some of the issues the proposal addresses:

•  

Traffic 

Traffic remains one of the plaza's biggest problems, said Lamster: "Anybody who's tried to come in or out of Dallas knows that this funnel is not very effective, especially at the corner of Elm and Houston. It's extremely dangerous."

That's because tourists, looking up at the Sixth Floor or down at the crudely painted X marking where the president was struck, often wander out onto Elm.

So what's proposed for all those cars squeezing in there, Lamster said, is to direct them to Main Street, which will be one way headed west (Commerce will remain one way headed east). Elm Street will become a pedestrian promenade — "so that people could actually walk in that space without fear of getting killed."

But Lamster added, helping commuters should not be a leading priority here: "Dallas needs to start thinking about how to make places that people want to be first and foremost, and then figure out how to implement traffic flow."

•  

 

Updating history

After the "News" published the extensive proposal, one online commenter observed that many people visit Dealey Plaza precisely because it's more or less unchanged since 1963. Visitors can experience something of what it was like on November 22nd.

So how can such a history-making site be seriously upgraded and more accessible — without damaging that sense of time and place?

"I think the plan really is the best of both worlds," Lamster said. "Dealey Plaza itself can't really be touched because it's a national historical landmark, and the primary additions that we make would be mostly invisible, except for the promontory coming up over the Triple Underpass. So really, if you're there to see what this place looked like in 1963, you'll actually be able to do so, and it will be virtually unchanged. In fact, you'll be able to look at it without being run down by moving traffic."

So — what happens with this plan now?

• Public discussion — with the publication of the proposal to "re-imagine Dealey Plaza," the News also announced a forum about the idea for November 15th. Lamster said response had been so strong that the forum has been moved to the News' own auditorium in its offices on Commerce Street.

 

•  

 

Beyond that?

"Well, that's going to be up to the city," Lamster said. "You know, I think there's going to have to be change in that space eventually. And Dallas has this really strong history of public private partnership. You can see it at Klyde Warren Park, at the various parks created by Parks for Downtown Dallas. So there's a strong history of the private interests and the public sector in Dallas working together to imagine public space and park space for the city. "

 

Edited November 21, 2022 by Matthew Koch
Added part about the Bike lane

[Matthew Koch]

It seems rather obvious that this is just an attempt to fill in the grassy knoll.

They did the exact same thing on the 50th anniversary when I was there. They put the media tents and trailers in the parking lot behind the knoll up to the fence so that you couldn't go back there. They also tore up the road and paved over elm so that the x's weren't there for the 50th anniversary. This seems very reminiscent of that chicanery.

Edited November 21, 2022 by Matthew Koch
Grammer, I went to public American schools

[Joseph Backes]

The audio file - https://www.tpr.org/business/2022-11-11/can-dealey-plaza-in-dallas-really-be-improved-this-new-plan-says-yes-and-heres-how

This idiot describes Dealey Plaza as "dangerous, and non-functional."  What the actual F? 

The public forum was moved? - Lamster said response had been so strong that the forum has been moved to the News' own auditorium in its offices on Commerce Street. Did anyone go to the public forum on this? 

[David Von Pein]

9 hours ago, Lori Spencer said:

If this project goes forward as proposed, the Dealey Plaza we have known for nearly a century will be unrecognizable. 

Nonsense. It won't be "unrecognizable" at all....as I talk about HERE.

The "pools" in the middle of the street are a stupid (and very tacky) idea, though, I'll grant you that.

Click:

 

Edited November 21, 2022 by David Von Pein

[Sandy Larsen]

5 minutes ago, David Von Pein said:

9 hours ago, Lori Spencer said:

If this project goes forward as proposed, the Dealey Plaza we have known for nearly a century will be unrecognizable. 

Nonsense. It won't do anything of the kind.....as I talk about HERE.

 

Sure Dave... they're going to change Dealey Plaza so that nothing changes. Got it.

 

[David Von Pein]

8 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Sure Dave... they're going to change Dealey Plaza so that nothing changes. Got it.

The proposed re-design won't change one single significant landmark in Dealey Plaza. Unless you think the parking lot behind the knoll is a "significant landmark". And why would anyone think that? And that parking lot has undoubtedly been "changed" at least a little bit since 1963 anyway.

Edited November 21, 2022 by David Von Pein

[Benjamin Cole]

My guess is 99% of the people who visit Dealey Plaza do so to see a historical site, preserved. 

They want to see it as it was during the JFKA.

There was once a proposal to tear down the TSBD. 

No slam on Dallas, but why else visit Dallas? No coastline, no mountains, no world-class or even national-class anything.

It might be a great place to live, better than most big US cities.