BG's Photo Library: DC -- Ford's Theatre Natl Historic Site

DC -- Ford's Theatre Natl Historic Site -- Notes:

Photo Library Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie's Photo Library home page.

Description of Pictures: Construction across the street on the new education center.

Partially Reviewed: Rough draft. I've gone through these pictures once, removing the worst ones, some duplication, etc. I usually take sequences of 4 or 5 pictures at a time and there are lots of near duplicates. I'll be doing a final review later which allows me compare the pictures that survived the first cut and make final determinations of what pictures to keep.

Slide Show: Want to see the pictures as a slide show? [Slideshow]

Copyrights: Standard stuff. All pictures were taken by Bruce Guthrie who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use. If used in a publication or web site, please give appropriate attribution (such as "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie"). If they're used in a publication, I'd love to receive a free copy of the publication. You are not authorized to resell these pictures or make a profit from them. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from official signs on location; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

Help? The 0640x0480 links are for screen viewing and emailing. The 2048x1536 (older ones may be different sizes than this) links are mostly for downloading and printing (they can be used to do reasonable-quality prints up to about 8x10). [Click here for additional help]

Share: Facebook Twitter Digg del.icio.us
[1] FORDS_100710_02.JPG 0640x0480 2048x1536	[2] FORDS_100710_07.JPG 0640x0480 2048x1536	[3] FORDS_100710_11.JPG 0640x0480 2048x1536
[4] FORDS_100710_15.JPG 0640x0480 2048x1536	[5] FORDS_100710_22.JPG 0640x0480 2048x1536

Limiting Text: You can turn off all of this text by clicking this link: [Thumbnails Only]
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Description of Subject Matter: This is the theatre where Abraham Lincoln was shot on April 14, 1865 by the racist whacko John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln's body was carried across the street to the William Petersen house where he died the next day. Just six days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Lincoln and his wife, Mary, went to see a performance of the play "Our American Cousin". Booth slipped into the back of President's box, shot him point-blank in the back of the head, and jumped onto the stage, running off yelling the Virginia state motto "Sic Semper Tyrannis" ("Thus always with tyrants"). Booth was hunted down and killed in Virginia on April 26 while the rest of his gang were tried, some of whom were assassinated for their role in a plot to kill Lincoln, the Vice President, and the Secretary of State. (Included in the executions was Mary Surratt, the first woman in the United States executed by the federal government.)

Ford's Theater was built in 1863 by John Ford. After the assassination, angry mobs wanted to burn the structure down but the federal government seized it, even throwing the owner into jail on suspicions that he might have been involved with Booth (no connection was found). The federal government purchased the theatre in 1866 and purchased the Petersen House in 1896. Originally, the theatre was gutted and turned into a federal office building. In 1893, one of the floors in the new office building collapsed, killing 22 people and injuring more than 60 others. The federal workers were moved and, for a time, the Army Medical Museum (currently at the Walter Reed Medical Center) moved in here. The building was transferred to the park service in 1930. The park service eventually decided to refurbish the inside as a working theatre which appears pretty much identically to how it appeared that fateful night in 1865. The $27 million renovation was unveiled in 1968. So nothing of the interior of the building dates from the time of Lincoln's assassination but it looks li ...More...
Various Signs: Civil War to Civil Rights: Downtown Heritage Trail:
6. John Wilkes Booth's Escape.
Twelve-year-old Henry Davis and his brother often looked out the back window of their Ninth Street home before they went to bed. They were fascinated by the comings and goings of actors and stagehands at the rear of Ford's Theatre, at the other end of the alley on 10th Street.
On the evening of April 4, 1865, Henry went to bed early but his brother stayed up and was a witness to history. He saw a man limp from the back door of the theater, struggle onto a horse, and dash down the alley toward F Street. It was the famous actor and Confederate supporter John Wilkes Booth, the matinee idol of his day. He had just shot President Lincoln as he sat in his box, watching Our American Cousin.
Booth had been trying to capture the president for months. Now the plan was to murder Mr. Lincoln, but this plan had come together only hours before. At six pm, Booth and his co-conspirators met at the Herndon House, which once stood just steps from this alley on the corner of Ninth and F where the Courtyard by Marriott hotel is today. There it was agreed that Booth's fellow conspirator Leis Powell would kill Secretary of State Seward, and George Azerodt would kill Vice President Johnson. Booth took Lincoln for himself.
Azerodt's will apparently failed him. Powell severely wounded Seward. But Booth's bullet hit home. The full story is told at Ford's Theatre around the corner on Tenth Street, and in the Petersen House across the street where Lincoln died at 7:22 the next morning. Booth would be apprehended and killed in a Virginia tobacco shed 12 days later.
Wikipedia Description: Ford's Theatre
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ford's Theatre is an historic theatre in Washington, D.C., used for various stage performances beginning in the 1860s. It is also the site of the assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. After being shot, the fatally wounded President was carried across the street to the Petersen House, where he died the next morning. The theatre and house are preserved together as Ford's Theatre National Historic Site.

Ford's Theatre is located at 511 10th Street, NW.

Theatre:

The site was originally a house of worship, constructed in 1833 as the First Baptist Church of Washington. In 1861, after the congregation relocated to a newly built structure, John T. Ford bought the former church and renovated it into a theatre. He first called it Ford's Athenaeum. It was gutted by fire in 1862, and was rebuilt, opening the following year as Ford's New Theatre.

Just five days after General Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, Lincoln sat in the "State Box" watching Our American Cousin. A well-known actor, John Wilkes Booth, desperate to aid the dying Confederacy, stepped into the box and shot Lincoln in the back of the head. He then jumped onto the stage, and cried out "Sic semper tyrannis" (some heard "The South is avenged!") just before escaping through the alley.

The United States Government seized the theatre, with Congress paying Ford $100,000 in compensation, and an order was issued forever prohibiting its use as a place of public amusement. The theatre was eventually taken over by the U.S. military and served as the home of the records of the War Department records on the first floor, the Library of the Surgeon General's Office on the second floor, and the Army Medical Museum, during the period 1866-1887. In 1887 the medical uses were eliminated and it became a War Department clerk's office. The front part of the building collapsed on June 9, 1893, and killed 22 of those clerks, in ...More...
Directly Related Pages: Other pages here that have content directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos]
- 1960_DC_Fords_Hist: DC -- Ford's Theatre Natl Historic Site -- Historic Images (1 photos from 1960)
- 1997_DC_Fords: DC -- Ford's Theatre Natl Historic Site (4 photos from 1997)
- 2000_DC_Fords: DC -- Ford's Theatre Natl Historic Site (3 photos from 2000)
- 2002_DC_Fords: DC -- Ford's Theatre Natl Historic Site (1 photos from 2002)
- 2003_DC_Fords: DC -- Ford's Theatre Natl Historic Site (5 photos from 2003)
- 2004_DC_Fords: DC -- Ford's Theatre Natl Historic Site (4 photos from 2004)
- 2005_DC_Fords: DC -- Ford's Theatre Natl Historic Site (13 photos from 2005)
- 2006_DC_Fords: DC -- Ford's Theatre Natl Historic Site (13 photos from 2006)
- 2007_DC_Fords: DC -- Ford's Theatre Natl Historic Site (4 photos from 2007)
- 2008_DC_Fords: DC -- Ford's Theatre Natl Historic Site (18 photos from 2008)
- ...More (16 total)...
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: Civil War National Park
2010 photos: Equipment this year: I was using mostly the Fuji S100fs until the third one broke and I started sending them back for repairs. Then I used either the Fuji S200EHX or the Nikon D90. Trips this year: I've got so many local commitments that I'm having trouble getting away. I drove out to Lexington, Kentucky to cover the Civil War Preservation Trust's annual conference in June. I flew out to California and Nevada for two weeks in July for the San Diego Comic-Con. Ego strokes: Nothing major so far. Photos taken this year: 260,000 through August -- down about 5 percent from last year's frenetic pace.
Photo Contact: Email Bruce Guthrie.