Ford's Theatre is a theater in Washington, D.C., which opened in 1863. In 1865, it was the site of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth.

Venue: Ford's Theatre
Address: 511 Tenth Street
Town: Washington, D.C., US
Capacity: 665

Ford's Theatre is a theater in Washington, D.C., which opened in 1863. In 1865, it was the site of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth. 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. 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. The site was originally a house of worship, constructed in 1833 as the second meeting house of the First Baptist Church of Washington, with Obadiah Bruen Brown as the pastor. In 1861, after the congregation moved to a newly built structure, John T. Ford bought the former church and renovated it into a theater. He first called it Ford's Athenaeum. It was destroyed by fire in 1862 and was rebuilt. On April 14, 1865, five days after General Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, President Abraham Lincoln attended a performance of Tom Taylor's play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre. John Wilkes Booth entered the presidential box and shot Lincoln in the back of the head with a 5.87-inch derringer, mortally wounding him. Booth stabbed Major Henry Rathbone as Rathbone came at him, then leapt from the box onto the stage and made his escape through the back of the theater, en route stabbing orchestra leader William Withers Jr. The assassination was witnessed by a theater full of about 1,700 people, possibly including the then 5-year-old Samuel J. Seymour who claimed to be the last living witness to the Lincoln assassination before his death in 1956. An unconscious Lincoln was taken across the street to the