Ford’s Theatre, theater, museum, and learning center in Washington, D.C., that is the site of and dedicated to the history of the assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. Ford’s Theatre, the adjacent Star Saloon, and Peterson House, across the street, were designated the Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site in 1970.
The building that houses Ford’s Theatre was built in 1833 as the First Baptist Church of Washington. After the congregation moved to a new building in 1859, John T. Ford bought it and converted it into a theater, Ford’s Athenaeum. Less than a year after it opened, the theater was destroyed by a fire in 1862. Ford rebuilt it, and Ford’s Theatre opened a year later. With its opulent interior and program of plays featuring the leading actors of the day, it became a popular venue for theatergoers.
On that fateful day in April 1865, five days after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee had ended the Civil War, Lincoln and his wife, together with two guests, went to Ford’s Theatre to see the popular comedy Our American Cousin. John Wilkes Booth, a leading actor and Confederate sympathizer, decided to assassinate the president. He stepped into Lincoln’s box and shot him in the head.
The theater closed immediately amid calls for it to be burned to the ground. The federal government seized the theater from Ford (later paying him $100,000) and converted it into an office building. It was used mostly for administrative functions, including the Division of Records and Pensions, until 1893, when three interior floors collapsed, killing 22 clerks and injuring many others. Although it was repaired, the building thereafter was generally used as a storehouse.
In 1932 the Lincoln Museum opened on the first floor of Ford’s Theatre. More exhibits came to occupy higher floors. It was not until 1964, however, that a project was undertaken to restore the theater to its appearance in 1865. In 1968 Ford’s Theatre reopened as a working theater. In the 1980s the Ford’s Theatre Museum was redesigned to focus less on Lincoln’s life and more on his assassination, and another major renovation of both the theater and the museum took place in 2007–09. Ford’s Theatre remains open to tours except during rehearsals and performances, and the Lincoln Museum is now located in the theater’s basement.