The West End Historic District spreads across 67.5 acres of northwest downtown Dallas, bounded roughly north of Commerce, east of I-35E, west of Lamar and south of the Woodall Rodgers Freeway. This is a place shaped by trade: it began as a trading post founded by John Neely Bryan, and in July 1872 the Houston & Texas Central Railroad arrived downtown, drawing manufacturing companies whose warehouses would come to define the district’s architecture. Part of what you see is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places as the Westend Historic District, and a smaller area is protected as a Dallas Landmark District.
The far western edge of the district belongs to the Dealey Plaza Historic District, a National Historic Landmark centered on structures and memorials associated with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, an event that brought nationwide prominence to this neighborhood in the 1960s. History layers here in brick, rail and road, and at the district's far western edge the warehouses give way to Dealey Plaza, where the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s fixed this neighborhood in the nation's memory.