Hertz Sign from the roof of the Texas School Book Depository
Prior to the iconic Hertz Rent-a-Car billboard, there were at least two other advertisements on the roof of the 411 Elm Street warehouse overlooking Dealey Plaza. In the mid-to-late 1940s, when the building was occupied by John Sexton and Company grocery wholesalers, there was a billboard in the southwest corner of the roof advertising U.S. Royal Tires. The tire brand was one of several at the time owned by the United States Rubber Company, which became Uniroyal, Inc. in 1961. That sign came down in the early 1950s. On June 16, 1953, Dallas Mayor R.L. Thornton formally turned on a brand-new Ford neon sign on the roof of the Sexton building. Occupying the same southwest corner footprint as the U.S. Royal Tires sign, the new Ford sign measured thirty-three feet high and sixty-two feet wide. Featuring half a mile of neon tubing, it was billed as "the largest animated neon sign in the Southwest." The billboard celebrated the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Ford Motor Company and specifically acknowledged the company's Dallas assembly plant with the slogan: "Ford. Built in Texas. Built by Texans."
In December 1959, the 100-foot-wide Hertz Rent-a-Car time-and-temperature billboard was installed diagonally across the roof of the building. According to Hertz, at the time "it was one of the largest and brightest billboards in the United States" and one of only three regional Hertz billboards in the country (the others being in Chicago and Miami). The Hertz sign was also among the first to display the alternating electronic time and temperature. The billboard was installed atop the warehouse in the final years of the Sexton Co. occupation, and it had been on the roof a little more than three years when the Texas School Book Depository Company moved into the building. On November 22, 1963, the Hertz sign became historically significant as the clock that marked 12:30PM as the minute that shots were fired at the Kennedy motorcade. Internationally recognized, the Hertz sign would go on to appear in thousands of photographs and home movies over the next several years. A small replica was even included, minus the Hertz name, atop a miniature Depository in the FBI's 1964 scale-model of Dealey Plaza.
From 1959 until the mid-1960s, the Hertz sign prominently advertised Chevrolet vehicles. By the spring of 1966, "Chevrolets" had been covered over by thin metal panels spelling "Fords." The reason behind this change in sponsorship or advertising is unknown, though "Fords" remained on the sign (with "Chevrolets" beneath) until the sign was removed. On December 11, 1973, the electronic time and temperature function was permanently turned off. In the midst of the U.S. energy crisis, President Nixon requested all lighted outdoor advertising not identifying a place of business be shut off. A Hertz spokesman said at the time, "We don't do business at that location, so we're turning off the sign, as the President requested." Aerial photographs suggest that the Hertz sign may have been temporarily turned off prior to this, including in May 1972.
After Dallas County purchased the Texas School Book Depository building in 1977, engineers soon determined that the heavy aging sign was structurally damaging the 1901 warehouse. It was removed by crane on May 22, 1979, and the metal face plates, including the separate panels advertising both Chevrolet and Ford vehicles, were saved while the framework was discarded. Dallas County Public Works Director Judson Shook recognized the historical significance of the billboard but was unsure what to do with it. The Hertz Corporation was no longer interested in their abandoned advertisement, while the director of the American Association for State and Local History recommended to Shook that the "curio...[with] no genuine historical value" should be destroyed. Shook insisted on preserving the sign, and it was stored for several years in the basement of the building, where it narrowly escaped an arson attempt on the warehouse in 1984. The metal plates of the Hertz sign have long been part of the Museum's Collection, although elements of the sign were not publicly displayed until the fall of 2021. -- Stephen Fagin, Curator
