Photo of a 2nd floor office inside the Texas School Book Depository building

This FBI photographic print was in the personal collection of retired agent Nat A. Pinkston (1915-2011). Pinkston was a Dallas attorney prior to joining the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He retired from the Dallas FBI office in 1967 after twenty-eight years of service. Pinkston was involved in the local assassination investigation, notably tracing ownership of the Mannlicher-Carcano found in the Depository to employee Lee Harvey Oswald. He was also dispatched to the Texas School Book Depository on December 2, 1963, after Lee Harvey Oswald's clipboard was discovered in the northwest corner of the sixth floor near where the rifle had been found shortly after the assassination. -- Stephen Fagin, Curator

An amateur color photograph showing this same area was taken on Saturday, November 23, 1963, by the late Spaulding Jones, then regional manager for Macmillan and Company publishers. Rather than the main entrance to the Depository Company office on the second floor, Mr. Jones identified this area as the "Macmillan Co. Regional Office entrance" in a handwritten description on the reverse of his photograph: https://emuseum.jfk.org/objects/39832. However, as published in an FBI report on the building, the Bureau's photograph of the same space identifies it as the main entrance to the Depository Company offices on the second floor. A small portion of the decorative tile wall surrounding the stairwell from the first floor to the second floor visible in the background confirms this. Since it is unknown when Mr. Jones added this description, it is possible that he misremembered the location. It is also possible that someone other than Mr. Jones added the description at some point and made a mistake. -- Stephen Fagin, Curator