Size Matters: Finding Oswald's Neely Street Writing Nook
The north balcony closet has its advocates. The evidence has other ideas.
Author's reconstruction of Oswald composing his proto manifestos in the mudroom of 214 W. Neely Street.
Credit: Sean R. DeGrilla
Sometimes, size matters. At 214 West Neely Street in Dallas, it matters quite a bit.
The location of Lee Harvey Oswald’s private writing space has been obscured by a simple but consequential assumption that a closet near the north balcony must be the room Marina Oswald described. The closet exists. The balcony exists. What is missing is the evidence that this was the room where Oswald installed shelves, placed a table and chair, secluded himself from his family, and worked on his political writings.
I have been inside the apartment. I have photographed its rooms and filmed the competing locations in detail. More importantly, I have compared the physical layout with Marina’s sworn testimony, her recollections published by Priscilla Johnson McMillan, and an overlooked sentence in Oswald’s own note to Marina before the attempted shooting of General Edwin Walker.
The evidence begins with a description of an actual room. And that description points to the rear mudroom.
The Room Marina Described
On June 11, 1964, Marina testified that her husband had a private room “a little larger than a closet.” Later in her testimony, Marina described a small storeroom off a balcony entrance. She identified its furnishings as a table and shelves. She described firearms kept there, recalled that Oswald did not want her entering, and said he spent long periods alone inside.
This was not a casual reference to a linen closet. It was testimony describing the function of a room as a private workspace with furniture, storage, and control over access. Priscilla Johnson McMillan provided another important description in Marina and Lee. According to her account, the greatest attraction of the Neely Street apartment for Oswald was a tiny room, not much bigger than a double coat closet, that he could use as a study. This was not simply a place to store clothing. Oswald specifically valued the apartment because it offered him a private room in which to work.
McMillan's account supplies an even more revealing architectural detail. The study had two entrances: one from the exterior stairs and another from the living room. Oswald could lock both doors and enter or leave the apartment without Marina's knowledge. This description is especially significant because it introduces a physical requirement that any proposed location for Oswald's study must satisfy two separate points of access, one connected to the exterior stairs.
During the June 11 hearing, Allen Dulles asked how the door was secured. Marina explained that Oswald fastened it from the inside and that it could not be locked from the outside.
On July 24, 1964, she described him locking himself in the room while writing in the notebook connected with his preparations against Walker.
Any proposed location must withstand scrutiny of its dimensions, furnishings, intended use, doorway, and relationship to the apartment’s layout. A theory that accounts for nothing more than the word “balcony” has not identified Oswald’s study. It has merely identified a balcony.
The North Balcony Closet
Right: Door leading to the north balcony; Center: Closet at the center of the dispute; Left: Staircase descending to the front entrance on Neely Street. A large, open room occupies the foreground.
Credit: Zach Womack.
The north balcony overlooks Neely Street. Just inside, a small closet appears near the balcony door. Based on my firsthand inspection, the north balcony closet measures approximately four feet along one dimension and three and one-half feet across, about 12–14 square feet before considering the shelves and whatever furniture would have been needed.
North balcony closet.
Credit: Sean R. DeGrilla
Then look beyond the closet. The photograph shows a large room immediately outside the closet, behind the camera. This was not a secluded pocket at the rear of the apartment. It was a clsoet adjoining the front living area, not a separate room at the rear of the apartment.
The shelves present another problem for anyone who declares this to be Oswald’s custom-built writing nook. Seeing shelves in a more recent walkthrough does not tell us who installed them. Priscilla Johnson McMillan’s account specifically describes Oswald building shelves for his special room. Where is the evidence that he built the particular shelves now visible in the north balcony closet?
I measured a 47.5-inch wooden shelf from the master bedroom closet at the property.
Earlier visual examination suggested Southern Yellow Pine and an older, possibly early-1950s appearance. This shelf is the same size, shape, and material composition as the north balcony closet. Since both closets have the same shelving, they were not constructed by Oswald, since he only made two shelves for his writing nook.
Master Bedroom Closet
Original photograph looking down into the master-bedroom closet. Its approximately 20-inch depth is the principal dimensional problem.
Credit: Zach Womack.
The master bedroom closet is approximately four feet wide but just twenty inches deep, an area of roughly 6.7 square feet. A shelf that almost spans the full width of a recess is not a desk.
Shelf from the master bedroom closet, the same dimensions as the shelves in the north balcony closet.
Credit: Zach Womack.
At twenty inches deep, the closet provides a remarkably poor match for an adult working at a table with a chair and stored possessions.
The north balcony closet is larger, approximately 12–14 square feet, but the shelving consumes portions of that very narrow area.
Rear Mudroom
The rear mudroom measures approximately 3.9 by 4.5 feet, about 17.6 square feet. On those estimates, it is roughly 3.6–5.6 square feet larger than the north balcony closet and more than twice the floor area of the bedroom closet. But square footage alone does not locate a study. What matters is the way that floor space is arranged: whether a table and chair can be used with the reported shelves; whether the space forms a distinct, closable room; and how it connects to the rest of the apartment.
Illustrative mudroom reconstruction based on Marina’s reported furnishings of shelves, a small table, and a chair.
Credit: Sean R. DeGrilla.
It is a small, distinct enclosure reached from the rear entrance, with a doorway toward the kitchen. It offers precisely the kind of contained space that could be furnished as a personal workroom and closed off while its occupant wrote.
I stood in that same room and photographed myself to provide a sense of its scale. Although the original door has been removed, remnants of its hinges and strike plate remain visible today.
The author in the mudroom at the rear of 214 W. Neely Street. Beyond the door is the staircase where Oswald posed for the infamous backyard photographs.
Credit: Cody Womack.
McMillan’s Marina and Lee describes Oswald preparing a special space, building shelves, and placing a chair and table inside to create a tiny office. In Marina’s account, it was his own “little nook.” The description of making a personal workspace is strikingly consistent with the mudroom’s layout and separation.
The rear location also illuminates testimony that Marina did not always know when Oswald left the apartment and that he took pains to keep her away from his belongings. A room beside the rear stairway makes it possible to work and depart without repeatedly crossing the front living spaces.
Oswald's Own Note: The Study Was Real
Now consider evidence that predates every Warren Commission interview, the handwritten Russian-language note Oswald left for Marina before his April 10, 1963, attempt to shoot General Edwin Walker. The note survives as Commission Exhibit No. 1.
Reverse side of the Walker Note
Commission Exhibit No. 1, National Archives.
Turn to the second handwritten page and look at item 8.
The English translation printed with Commission Exhibit No. 1 reads: “The address book can be found on my table in the study should you need same.” The Warren Commission Report reproduces the sentence without the word “you”; both versions identify his table in the study.
Not “a shelf somewhere.” Not “the bedroom.” A table. In a study.
Oswald’s note does not label a room on a floor plan. It does something more fundamental, it independently establishes that a table in a place he called his study was part of the Neely Street household. Marina’s recollection of a private room containing a table was not an invention produced for the Commission months later. The documentary record already contains the same arrangement.
Place that sentence beside the testimony and then walk the actual building. One room stands out: the small rear mudroom that could be furnished, closed, locked, and used away from the larger rooms.
What Was Written In That Room?
Marina’s testimony specifically documents Oswald writing in a concealed notebook connected with the Walker shooting. It does not provide a page-by-page eyewitness inventory of the surviving political manuscripts. The manuscripts themselves, however, belong to the Neely Street period in early 1963.
Among the writings examined in my forthcoming book, Communistic Tendencies: The Writings and Beliefs of Lee Harvey Oswald, are the drafts I describe as Oswald’s proto manifestos: a system opposed to the communist., a system opposed to the Capitalist in that:, The atheian system, and The Communist Party of the United States has betrayed itself!. These were not casual writings. In them Oswald wrestled with the failures he perceived in capitalism and communism and attempted to articulate an alternative of his own.
The rear mudroom is the most persuasive physical setting for that work. It matches the small study Oswald referenced, the room Marina described, and the private workplace McMillan later reconstructed from her interviews. The material evidence and the writing chronology reinforce one another.
That matters for a reason larger than architecture. Locating the study helps place Oswald’s developing political ideas back into the physical circumstances in which they were composed, rather than treating his writings as floating documents detached from his life.
The North Balcony Theory Fails the Evidence
The north balcony identification rests on the shortcut that Marina said “balcony". There is a closet near the balcony facing Neely Street, therefore that closet must have been the study. But “balcony” is not a room number or a measured floor plan.
The north balcony facing Neely Street.
FBI Item B3, National Archives.
The argument never gets past its first assumption. The same witness described a storeroom large enough for a table and shelves, a place where Oswald secluded himself, and an inside fastening. Selecting her directional word while setting aside her description of the room is not a complete reading of the testimony.
Marina's testimony gives us more than a compass direction. It gives us a description of the room's character and use; a storeroom with a table, shelves, weapons, and long periods of solitude.
Marina testified that Oswald's room could be locked only from the inside and that he locked himself in while writing in his notebook. McMillan supplies the construction of shelves, a chair and table. Oswald himself supplies “my table in the study.” And the building supplies a small, independently enclosed mudroom at the rear entrance.
With the north balcony, where would the table and chair have stood with shelving on opposing walls? How does that closet compare with a distinct room beside the rear stairs that can be separated from household traffic?
Calling the north balcony closet a mudroom does not turn it into one.
The Bottom Line
Since there are no known photographs showing the interior of 214 W. Neely Street as it appeared in 1963, we must examine the physical layout and its limitations. The master bedroom closet is too shallow for the reported furnishings. The north balcony closet depends on a selective reading of one location phrase while leaving serious questions about usable space, function, and seclusion. The rear mudroom accommodates the testimony more naturally. It is a distinct, closable, and lockable space at the rear entrance, with sufficient room for the small work setup Marina described.
Oswald wrote of a study. Marina described a study in all but name. The rear mudroom is where the architecture makes those descriptions make sense.
The evidence doesn't bend to fit a theory. The theory must fit the evidence. And no amount of historical imagination can make a closet bigger than it was.
Because in this case, size matters.
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