The history of Washington
This record gathers one point of ground in Washington: Ford's Theatre on 10th Street Northwest. Built in 1833 as a Baptist meeting house, it became a theater, the site of Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865, then government offices, and now a working theater and museum.
Ford's Theatre on 10th Street Northwest in Washington, D. C. is where John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, during a performance of Our American Cousin. Built in 1833 as a Baptist meeting house, it was later converted into a theater, seized by the government, used as offices, and now operates again as a working theater and museum.
A Baptist meeting house becomes John Ford's theater
Ford's Theatre is a working theater and museum in Washington, D. C., where Abraham Lincoln was shot in 1865. The building standing on this spot began life as a church. In 1833, it was built as the second meeting house of the First Baptist Church of Washington, with Obadiah Bruen Brown as pastor. The congregation moved out in 1859, leaving the building empty except for occasional concerts.
In December 1861, a Baltimore theater man named John T. Ford leased the empty church. He called it Ford's Athenaeum, then spent around $10,000 fixing it up, adding a third level of seats called the Family Circle. It reopened in March 1862. A few months later, fire destroyed the whole building. Ford rebuilt it on the same ground, hiring architect Charles W. Lessig to copy the design of his theater in Baltimore. The new building opened on August 27, 1863, as Ford's New Theatre.
Booth shoots Lincoln during a comedy performance
On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln came to see a comedy called Our American Cousin. It was his twelfth visit to the theater. The war had nearly ended five days earlier, when Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. When Lincoln's party arrived late, the band played "Hail to the Chief" and the crowd rose to cheer him.
During the play, John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, slipped into the president's box. He shot Lincoln in the back of the head with a small pistol, then stabbed Major Henry Rathbone, who tried to stop him. Booth jumped to the stage, breaking his leg, and shouted "Sic semper tyrannis" before escaping on horseback. Lincoln was carried across the street to the Petersen boarding house, where he died the next morning at 7:22 a.m.
Soldiers seal the theater and the government seizes it
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sealed off the theater as a crime scene the morning Lincoln died. Soldiers guarded the doors for three months while investigators tracked down Booth's conspirators. Ford tried to reopen on July 10, 1865, with a benefit performance meant to raise money for a Lincoln memorial. He sold over 200 tickets. Stanton sent soldiers to turn the crowd away, and the next day the government seized the building for good.
Clerks and an army museum fill the gutted theater
Congress paid Ford $88,000 for his loss. He stripped out some of the fancier fixtures, including the steel columns that had held up the upper seating, and carried them off to his theater in Baltimore. Workers gutted the inside and turned the building into government offices. For the next two decades, clerks from the Office of Records and Pensions worked on the first two floors. The Army Medical Museum took the third floor, until it moved out to a new building on the National Mall in 1887.
Oldroyd's Lincoln collection becomes a federal museum
An amateur Lincoln collector named Osborn H. Oldroyd struck a deal with a memorial association in 1892 to put his vast collection of Lincoln artifacts on display inside the building. The government formally took the site over as a museum in 1932, opening on February 12, Lincoln's birthday. Congress bought Oldroyd's whole collection before he died in 1930, and much of it remains in the museum today, alongside the blood-stained pillow from the Petersen House and the door to Lincoln's box.
Three office floors collapse, killing twenty-two clerks
On June 9, 1893, three floors of the building collapsed at once. A support pillar had been undermined during work in the cellar below. Twenty-two clerks died and sixty-eight more were hurt. Some Washingtonians started calling the old church-turned-theater cursed. Workers rebuilt the floors, and the Pension Office clerks moved back in the following year.
The theater reopens after a century of silence
After 103 years of silence as a stage, Ford's Theatre reopened as a working theater on January 30, 1968, with a nationally televised gala. Vice President Hubert Humphrey helped dedicate it. The building got another major renovation in the 2000s, reopening February 11, 2009, timed to Lincoln's 200th birthday. President Barack Obama spoke at the ceremony, with performers including James Earl Jones and Audra McDonald. The theater now seats 665 people, and the presidential box is never used for a seated audience again.
Plays are staged beneath the box where Lincoln died
Ford's Theatre still stages plays beneath the box where Lincoln was shot. The museum in the basement holds Booth's own diary, the derringer he used, and Lincoln's overcoat. Across 10th Street, the Petersen House keeps the room where Lincoln died, preserved as part of the same National Historic Site run by the National Park Service.
Ford's Theatre still runs as both a working stage and a museum on 10th Street Northwest.
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