Ford's Theatre

Ford's Theatre

Address	511 10th St, N.W. Washington, D.C. United States
Owner	National Park Service
Operator	Ford's Theatre Society
Type	Regional theater
Capacity	665
Construction
Opened	August 1863; 161 years ago (1863-08)
Reopened	1968, 2009
Website
www.fords.org
Ford's Theatre National Historic Site
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Site
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Coordinates	38°53′48″N 77°1′33″W / 38.89667°N 77.02583°W / 38.89667; -77.02583
Area	0.29 acres (0.12 ha) (theater alone) less than one acre (entire NHS)
Built	1863
Architectural style	Late Victorian
Visitation	856,079 (2005)
Website	Ford's Theatre National Historic Site
NRHP reference No.	66000034[1]
Added to NRHP	October 15, 1966

Ford's Theatre is a theater located in Washington, D.C., which opened in 1863. The theater is best known for being the site of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. On the night of April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth entered the theater box where Lincoln was watching a performance of Tom Taylor's play Our American Cousin, slipped the single-shot, 5.87-inch derringer from his pocket and fired at Lincoln's head. After being shot, the fatally wounded Lincoln was carried across the street to the nearby Petersen House, where he died the next morning.

The theater was later used as a warehouse and government office building. In 1893, part of its interior flooring collapsed, causing 22 deaths, and needed repairs were made. The building became a museum in 1932, and it was renovated and re-opened as a theater in 1968.^[2] A related Center for Education and Leadership museum opened in 2012, next to Petersen House.

The Petersen House and the theater are preserved together as Ford's Theatre National Historic Site, administered by the National Park Service; programming within the theater and the Center for Education is overseen separately by the Ford's Theatre Society.