Ford's Theatre

Ford's Theatre at 511 Tenth Street NW in Washington DC is at once a working stage, a museum and a memorial. On the evening of 14 April 1865, five days after the Civil War ended, President Abraham Lincoln was shot here in the back of the head by actor and Confederate sympathiser John Wilkes Booth during a performance of Our American Cousin. The mortally wounded president was carried across the street to the Petersen House, where he died the next morning. After decades of closure, the theatre was rebuilt to its 1865 appearance in 1968 and is again a producing venue. A basement museum displays the derringer pistol, Booth's diary and other artefacts; the Petersen House opposite forms part of the National Historic Site.