After years of decay, the city of Dallas demolished the 88-year old building at Elsbeth and Davis infamous for being where Lee Harvey Oswald lived before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The demolition of the old apartment building started around 8:30 Monday morning.  By 8:40 the first level unit where the Oswald's are said to have lived was gone.

Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife Marina lived at the complex from November 1962 to March 1963, eight months before the JFK assassination.

About a half dozen curious people with a strong sense of history showed up across the street to watch and take pictures of the 88-year old building coming down.

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Jose Sorola told us he wished the Oswald unit could have been saved and perhaps been restored and part of historic tours. But since the city said it had to go, Sorola bought a small piece of it.

"Yesterday, I came by and actually bought a window from Lee Harvey Oswald's unit number two and what I plan on doing is try to restore it as best as possible, and make it a little display if anybody is interested in using that it'll be nice, perserve a little history, keep the building alive somehow," said Sorola who paid $125 for the window.

The crumbling building, located at 600 Elsbeth Street, had not been occupied for several years. 

Jane Bryant, the woman who owns the building, bought it with hopes of restoring the complex, but the City of Dallas condemned the building back in 2011.

On Sunday evening several people, including Bryant, local artists, and nearby residents showed up to take wood or bricks from the building.

Freda Dillard, who takes people on JFK assassination tours, said she’s sad to see the building go.

“People are interested in it," said Dillard. "I have people that come from all over the world to take these tours and they want to see everything, including this apartment building.”

Hulton Archive / Getty Images, file

Mugshot of Lee Harvey Oswald (1939 - 1963), alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, taken by the Dallas Police department, Dallas, Texas.

“It’s very sad," added Dillard. "Tomorrow [Monday] afternoon it’s going to be gone and that’s another piece of history.”

The city won a court order in May requiring Jane Bryant to tear down the uninhabited 10-unit, two-story apartment complex. It says Bryant failed to act in the allotted time and that allowed the structure to become a nuisance.
   
Dallas city spokesman Frank Librio says demolition and asbestos abatement of the building is estimated to cost about $52,000. The city may place a lien on the property to recover that money.

It's unclear what will become of the space, but the property owner, Jane Bryant, has suggested perhaps it could be a dog park.

RFK Jr.: 'Very convincing' evidence that JFK wasn't killed by lone gunman

Tony Gutierrez / AP

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., left, said that he didn't believe a lone gunman killed President John F. Kennedy in an interview with journalist Charlie Rose, right, and Rory Kennedy, center, in front of an audience at the AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas Friday.

DALLAS -- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is convinced that a lone gunman wasn't solely responsible for the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, and said his father believed the Warren Commission report was a "shoddy piece of craftsmanship."

Kennedy and his sister, Rory, spoke about their family Friday night while being interviewed in front of an audience by Charlie Rose at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas. The event comes as a year of observances begins for the 50th anniversary of the president's death.

Their uncle was killed on Nov. 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade through Dallas. Five years later, their father was assassinated in a Los Angeles hotel while celebrating his win in the California Democratic presidential primary.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his father spent a year trying to come to grips with his brother's death, reading the work of Greek philosophers, Catholic scholars, Henry David Thoreau, poets and others "trying to figure out kind of the existential implications of why a just God would allow injustice to happen of the magnitude he was seeing."

He said his father thought the Warren Commission, which concluded Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing the president, was a "shoddy piece of craftsmanship." He said that he, too, questioned the report.

"The evidence at this point I think is very, very convincing that it was not a lone gunman," he said, but he didn't say what he believed may have happened.

Rose asked if he believed his father, the U.S. attorney general at the time of his brother's death, felt "some sense of guilt because he thought there might have been a link between his very aggressive efforts against organized crime."

Kennedy replied: "I think that's true. He talked about that. He publicly supported the Warren Commission report but privately he was dismissive of it."

Oswald's mafia links
He said his father had investigators do research into the assassination and found that phone records of Oswald and nightclub owner Jack Ruby, who killed Oswald two days after the president's assassination, "were like an inventory" of mafia leaders the government had been investigating.

Slideshow: Kennedy’s legacy

Henry Burroughs / AP

John F. Kennedy was the youngest man ever to serve as U.S. president. Click on the gallery for photos detailing key moments in his campaign for the White House, his brief time in office, and his untimely death.

Launch slideshow

He said his father, later elected U.S. senator in New York, was "fairly convinced" that others were involved.

The attorney and well-known environmentalist also told the audience light-hearted stories Friday about memories of his uncle. As a young child with an interest in the environment, he said, he made an appointment with his uncle to speak with him in the Oval Office about pollution.

He'd even caught a salamander to present to the president, which unfortunately died before the meeting.

"He kept saying to me, 'It doesn't look well,'" he recalled.

Rory Kennedy, a documentary filmmaker whose recent film "Ethel" looks at the life of her mother, also focused on the happier memories. She said she and her siblings grew up in a culture where it was important to give back.

"In all of the tragedy and challenge, when you try to make sense of it and understand it, it's very difficult to fully make sense of it," she said. "But I do feel that in everything that I've experienced that has been difficult and that has been hard and that has been loss, that I've gained something in it."

"We were kind of lucky because we lost our members of our family when they were involved in a great endeavor," her brother added. "And that endeavor is to make this country live up to her ideals."

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Audio tapes featuring Jackie Kennedy after JFK's death revealed