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Photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald's rooming house
Photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald's rooming house

Photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald's rooming house

Object number2003.006.0040
DateNovember 1963
ClassificationsPhotographs
Creator Federal Bureau of Investigation
ObjectPhotograph (b&w)
Credit LineNat Pinkston Collection/The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza
MediumPaper
Dimensions3 1/2 x 5 in. (8.9 x 12.7 cm)
DescriptionBlack and white photographic print of the rooming house at 1026 North Beckley Street in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas where Lee Harvey Oswald lived in November 1963. The photo was taken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as evidence in the days following the assassination of President Kennedy. The brick house has a white pergola porch with a sign on the front lawn reading "Bedroom for Rent." There is a single chair visible on the porch, and part of a tree is visible on the left side. A grassy lawn is in the foreground of the photo with part of a driveway visible in the lower right corner. The photograph was taken looking east from the Beckley sidewalk.
Curatorial Commentary
As of 2022, the rooming house at 1026 North Beckley Street in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas still looks very much as it did during the brief period that Lee Harvey Oswald rented a room at $8 a week, from October 14 to November 22, 1963. The house, built in 1935, is today owned by Patricia Puckett-Hall, the granddaughter of original owner Gladys Johnson, who rented a room to Oswald. Puckett-Hall recorded an oral history with the Museum in 2015. -- Stephen Fagin, Curator
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