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    Ford's Theatre
    Ford's Theatre
    Ford's Theatre
    Ebook213 pages42 minutes

    Ford's Theatre

    By Brian Anderson and Ford's Theatre Society

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    About this ebook

    Ford's Theatre in downtown Washington, DC, is best known as the notorious scene of Pres. Abraham Lincoln's assassination on April 14, 1865.


    It is among the oldest and most visited sites of national tragedy in the United States. First constructed in 1833 as a Baptist church, the property was acquired by John T. Ford and converted into a theater in 1861. Presenting almost 500 performances before the assassination, Ford afterward sold the building to the federal government. A century later, the National Park Service reconstructed the theater, and Ford's Theatre Society began presenting live performances there in 1968. Since then, the two organizations have partnered to offer more than 650,000 annual visitors an array of quality programming about Lincoln's presidency and legacy. Today, patrons can explore the Tenth Street "campus," consisting of the theater, interactive museum galleries, the house where Lincoln died, and the Center for Education and Leadership.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateApr 7, 2014
    ISBN9781439642672
    Ford's Theatre
    Author

    Brian Anderson

    Brian Anderson is the author and illustrator of the Roaring Brook Press titles Nighty Night, Sleepy Sleeps, The Prince's New Pet, and Monster Chefs,  as well as the creator of the runaway-hit comic strip, Dog eat Doug, which he began in 2004 as a webcomic and now appears in over 150 newspapers and is read by millions.  He lives in the Mooresville, North Carolina.

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      Book preview

      Ford's Theatre - Brian Anderson

      (NPS).

      INTRODUCTION

      Ford’s Theatre is primarily known as the place where, on the evening of Friday, April 14, 1865, Pres. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. While this horrifying incident defines Ford’s Theatre in American history, it represents only a tiny slice of the site’s 180-year life.

      Like most old commercial buildings, the structure called Ford’s Theatre has served different purposes in different eras. It was built in 1833 as home to the First Baptist Church of Washington. For 26 years, a racially diverse congregation met here between the two centers of federal government—the Capitol building and the Executive Mansion. For most of those years, the presiding pastor was the Reverend Obadiah Brown, an influential Baptist leader and founder of Columbian College, now called the George Washington University.

      In 1859, church leaders relocated the congregation to Thirteenth Street and put the building up for sale. John T. Ford, a theater owner and producer from Baltimore, Maryland, who long had wanted to expand his mid-Atlantic entertainment business to the Washington market, rented the structure in 1861 and later purchased it. After a massive fire in 1862, Ford reinvested in a new and opulent theater that attracted large crowds—including, on several occasions, President Lincoln, who enjoyed theater as a distraction from the burdens of his office. On April 14, 1865, Lincoln attended the 495th (and last) performance at Ford’s New Theatre.

      After the president’s assassination, the building became a military crime scene controlled by the War Department. Regaining custody after the conspirators were captured, tried, convicted, and hanged, John T. Ford sought to resume his business, but unnamed citizens threatened to burn the theater down if he dared desecrate the site of Lincoln’s death with what were widely viewed as morally questionable amusements. Ford sold the theater to the federal government, and over the next 77 years, the building served as a storage site for Civil War soldiers’ medical records, a workplace for clerks making pension decisions for veterans, a medical museum, and editorial offices for preparation of a medical history of the Civil War. Those decades of bureaucratic use were interrupted in 1893 when an ineptly managed basement excavation project caused parts of all three floors to collapse. The incident killed 22 people, injured 65 others, and further embellished the theater’s cursed reputation.

      As the shock of President Lincoln’s assassination faded with the passing decades, the desire to commemorate him grew. In 1896, the federal government purchased the Petersen boardinghouse where Lincoln had died and induced a collector of Lincoln memorabilia named Osborn Oldroyd to display his artifacts there. The maturation of the capital city, the 1909 centennial of Lincoln’s birth, and the desire to honor aged Civil War veterans led to construction of the Lincoln Memorial. In response to this renewed interest in Lincoln, in 1932, the government moved the Oldroyd collection into a new Lincoln Museum on the first floor of the old Ford’s Theatre building. In the years thereafter, the Petersen House (also known as the House Where Lincoln Died) was, in stages, restored to its appearance at the time of Lincoln’s death.

      In the 1950s, as the centennial of the Civil War approached, Sen. Milton Young of North Dakota led a successful effort to appropriate Congressional funds to create a historically accurate replica of the theater as it had been in 1865. The purpose behind this effort was to enable museum visitors to better visualize the events of the assassination. A team of federal government employees researched the structure’s history and developed blueprints, and the theater was rebuilt in the mid-1960s. The Department of the Interior initially planned to use the theater for ranger talks and other related programming. But to Frankie Hewitt, a transplanted Oklahoman with connections in the government and entertainment worlds, failure to revive live theatrical performances at Ford’s Theatre seemed a missed opportunity: the focus would be too much on John Wilkes Booth’s crime and not enough on President Lincoln’s character and values. After multiple conversations with then Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, Hewitt started a nonprofit organization called Ford’s Theatre Society and persuaded government officials to allow the society to present live theatrical programming in the renovated space.

      On January 30, 1968, entertainers sang, danced, and performed on the Ford’s Theatre stage for the first time since the night of President Lincoln’s assassination. The society has since worked with the National Park Service in one of the first examples of public-private partnerships enhancing programming at national historical sites. As a result of this partnership, Ford’s Theatre welcomes guests not only to visit the historic building and museum galleries, but also to enjoy live theater, just as Lincoln did some 150 years ago.

      In the 45 years since Ford’s Theatre reopened after a century of darkness, its purpose and prominence have grown. Ford’s Theatre Society cemented the theater’s importance in Washington by hosting presidents and other political leaders in annual televised galas, which in turn attracted world-class performers and financial support for its mission. The historic site has become a significant destination for more than 650,000 annual visitors, many of them students coming from across the country for their first visit to the capital of the United States.

      In 2007, the theater underwent a second major renovation, adding modern museum and lobby spaces as well as elevators and other conveniences. Ford’s Theatre Society also created the Center for Education and Leadership across the street, adjacent to the House Where Lincoln Died. Programming at the site has evolved as well. Theatrical presentations bring different aspects of the American experience to life, while ranger talks, walking tours, and other activities provide visitors with a rich visit, which is augmented online at www.fords.org.

      Today, 180 years after its initial construction, Ford’s Theatre has moved beyond the identity John Wilkes Booth sought to impose upon it, as the place where Booth pulled off his most dramatic act by ending Lincoln’s life and presidency. Instead, through the direct efforts of hundreds of people and the support of thousands more, Ford’s Theatre now is a place where people come to learn about Lincoln, the values for which he stood, and his enduring impact on the nation.

      One

      1833–1859

      CHURCH

      In the early 1800s, the humble reality of Washington, DC, fell far short of Pierre L’Enfant’s ambitions for the new nation’s capital city. Although L’Enfant’s design featured wide avenues, grand ceremonial circles, and elaborate buildings

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