Biography | Abraham Lincoln — Ford's Theatre, the Box Above the Stage

People treat Lincoln as a seated marble figure on the Mall. The last public room he entered is still a working theatre. Ford's Theatre stands at 511 Tenth Street NW in Washington. On the night of 14 April 1865 Lincoln sat in the presidential box to watch Our American Cousin. John Wilkes Booth entered the box and fired. Lincoln was carried across the street to the Petersen House and died there at 7:22 the next morning. The theatre had been a Baptist church before John T. Ford fitted it as a stage. After the assassination the federal government seized the building and used it as offices. It collapsed under clerks in 1893. The restored theatre reopened as a playhouse and museum in 1968. The box is kept as a memorial. The Petersen House is part of the same National Park unit. Springfield has the home and the tomb. Gettysburg has the cemetery. This pin is the address where the war presidency ended in a rented box. The alley behind the theatre is still the alley Booth used.