The building was Lee Harvey Oswald's vantage point during the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald, an employee at the depository, shot and mortally wounded President Kennedy from a sixth floor window on the building's southeastern corner.

In November 1961, Sexton Foods moved to a modern distribution facility located at 650 Regal Row Dallas.

[4] Work had begun on the west side of the sixth floor just before President Kennedy's motorcade, "leaving the whole scene in disarray, with stock shifted as far as the east wall, and stacks in between piled unusually high.

[6] The Texas School Book Depository Company maintained a second warehouse at 1917 Houston, several blocks north of the main building.

The short four-story structure was well removed from the parade route, half-hidden on an unpaved section of Houston.

[8] The mayor of Dallas, Wes Wise, saved the Texas School Book Depository from imminent destruction, preserving it for further research into the president's murder.

The building was sold at auction to Aubrey Mayhew, a Nashville, Tennessee music producer and collector of Kennedy memorabilia, by the owner D. H. Byrd.