What’s a city to do when a sitting President of the United States is assassinated along its streets? Dallas, site of the John F. Kennedy shooting, built a memorial. The city’s John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza, located one block east of Dealey Plaza (the location of the Kennedy murder), was dedicated on June 24, 1970.

Renowned architect Philip Johnson designed it as “a place of quiet refuge, an enclosed place of thought and contemplation separated from the city around, but near the sky and earth.” The cenotaph, a memorial for a person entombed elsewhere, contains an empty plinth at the center. The memorial was intended to symbolize the sense of absence that resulted from President Kennedy’s assassination.

The memorial also serves as a symbolic representation of the Kennedy spirit. Simple but emblematic and with just Kennedy’s name inscribed in gold along one inside wall, the memorial is open to the sky and comprised of white pre-cast concrete, providing a somber tribute to the slain 35th president.