http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1865/assasssination-abraham-lincoln.htm
After he was shot, the President was carried across 10th Street to a boarding house owned by William A. Peterson. In his diary entry the next day, Benjamin B. French recalled that he went "up to the house where the President lay, He was surrounded by the members of his cabinet, physicians, Generals, members of Congress, etc. I stood at his bedside for a short time. He was breathing very heavily, & I was told, what I could myself see, that there was no hope for him. I then went into a room where Mrs. Lincoln and Robert were, surrounded by ladies, none of whom, except Miss Kinney, were known to me. I took Mrs. Lincoln by the hand, and she made some exclamation indicating the deepest agony of mind. I also shook hands with Robert, who was crying audibly. I saw a few moments, when I left the room, and was asked to get into the President's carriage, then at the door, and go for Mrs. Secy. Welles, & Mrs. Doct. [Phineas Gurley]. I did so. Mrs. Welles was not up, & a lady at the house said she was too unwell to go, so I returned to the carriage, but, before we could get away someone said from the upper window that Mrs. Welles would go. I returned to the house and waited for her to dress and take a cup of tea & some toast, & then the carriage took us round to the President's House - I, supposing she was to go there and be ready to see Mrs. Lincoln when she should get home. She thought I was mistaken, and that she was to go to 10th Street. So I remained, and she went on. I staid at the President's a short time, directing that the house be kept closed, etc., and then came home and ate a very light breakfast. At nine, I again started in my own carriage with Ben and we drove up. We entered the gate very soon after the President's remains were taken in, and I went immediately to the room where they were and saw then taken from the temporary coffin in which they had been brought there. I went in, at the request of someone, to see Mrs. Lincoln. She was in bed, Mrs. Welles being alone with her. She was in great distress, and I remained only a moment. I then gave all the directions I could as to the preparations for the funeral, and staid till between 11 & 12, when my head ached so badly that I had to come home.1 http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/inside.asp?ID=635&subjectID=4 Tickets cost $.75 a seat. Lincoln went on the last night that the play was showing in the Fords Theater. 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 theatre. He first called it Ford's Athenaeum. It was destroyed by fire in 1862, and was rebuilt the following year. When the new Ford's Theatre opened in August 1863, it had seating for 2,400 persons and was called a "magnificent new thespian temple".[3]
Just five days after General Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, Lincoln and his wife attended a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre. The famous actor John Wilkes Booth, desperate to aid the dying Confederacy, stepped into the box where the presidential party was sitting and shot Lincoln. Booth then jumped onto the stage, and cried out "Sic semper tyrannis" (some heard "The South is avenged!") just before escaping through the back of the theatre.[4][5][6] Following the assassination, the United States Government appropriated 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. Between 1866 and 1887, the theatre was taken over by the U.S. military and served as a facility for the War Department with records kept on the first floor, the Library of the Surgeon General's Office on the second floor, and the Army Medical Museum on the third. In 1887, the building exclusively became a clerk's office for the War Department, when the medical departments moved out. On June 9, 1893, the front part of the building collapsed, killing 22 clerks and injuring another 68. This led some people to believe that the former church turned theatre and storeroom was cursed. The building was repaired and used as a government warehouse until 1911. It languished unused until 1918. The restoration of Ford's Theatre was brought about by the two decade-long lobbying efforts of Democratic National Committeeman Melvin D. Hildreth and Republican North Dakota Representative Milton Young. Hildreth first suggested to Young the need for its restoration in 1945. Through extensive lobbying of Congress, a bill was passed in 1955 to prepare an engineering study for the reconstruction of the building.[7] In 1964 Congress approved funds for its restoration, which began that year and was completed in 1968. The theatre reopened on January 30, 1968, with a gala performance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford's_Theatre |