History of Ford's Theatre

The First Baptist Church, the predecessor to Ford's Theatre, opened in 1834. John T. Ford rented the building in 1861 and turned it into a theatre. Here it appears as it stood before an 1862 fire.

1861: John T. Ford (1829-1894) failed in his first attempt at running a theatre in Washington, D.C., but he successfully managed theatres in other cities. At the beginning of the Civil War, he decided to try his luck again in the capital.

1862: John T. Ford opened Ford's Athenaeum. He remodeled the building and presented a mix of comedies, variety shows and Shakespearean plays to attract an elite clientele.

1863: After a destructive fire in 1862, Ford rebuilt his new theatre on the same site, but on an even grander scale. He mimicked the design of his Holliday Street Theatre in Baltimore.

1863: Ford’s Theatre hired well-known actors like John Wilkes Booth, whom Abraham Lincoln watched perform in The Marble Heart on November 9 of that year.

Sketch of John Wilkes Booth as he jumped over the front railing of the President’s Box, injuring his leg. Before he fled, he is said to have shouted, “Sic semper tyrannis!” (“Thus, always, to tyrants!”) and/or “The South is avenged!”

This engraving of President Lincoln's death misrepresents the size of the small room. Many people visited throughout the night, but they couldn’t have done so at one time. Lincoln died at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865.

July 1865: An anonymous letter sent to Ford warning him, "You must not think of opening tomorrow night. I can assure you it will not be tolerated." It was signed, "One of the many determined to prevent it." Ford ultimately heeded the warnings, and eventually sold the theatre to the War Department.

1866: Although people did not want the theatre to remain operational out of respect for Lincoln's assassination, they also objected to memorializing it. The federal government purchased the theatre and turned it into a three-story office building.

1924: Congressman Henry Riggs Rathbone of Illinois, son of the Major Henry Rathbone who witnessed the assassination, unveiled a plaque labeling what still functioned as a warehouse as the location where Lincoln was shot. Public opposition derailed Rathbone’s proposal to restore the theatre.

1940: The Lincoln Museum received many artifacts related to the assassination, including Booth's deringer pistol, seen here with Chief Clerk of the Judge Advocate General Edwin B. Pitts. Modern museum practices forbid handling artifacts in this manner.

1965-1967: In 1964, Congress approved funds to restore Ford's Theatre to its 1865-era appearance. Although the building's facade remained more or less intact, the interior needed extensive construction to undo all the changes that occurred since the night of the assassination.

1968: Ford's Theatre reopened as a national historic site and a working theatre. Thanks to the many photographs taken by Mathew Brady, the theatre looks remarkably similar to the way it did in 1865.

Though the museum previously deemphasized the assassination, renovations began in 1988 to address the event more thoroughly.

2009: The most recent renovations occurred in 2007 and finished in 2009. The new museum chronicles the difficulties Lincoln faced, the legacy he left behind, and the details of his assassination.

2009: Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site acquired street-level space in an adjacent office building, allowing the Society to expand and include a larger lobby with updated amenities.