The History Will Linger At Remade Ford's Theatre

Ford's Theatre was a Baptist church until it was taken over in 1861 by entrepreneur John T. Ford. The venue was destroyed by fire the night of Dec. 30, 1862, but was rebuilt and reopened in 1863.

After the assassination, Tetreault said, the theater became a gigantic crime scene, and when Ford sought to reopen for business, there was a public outcry. "It is holy ground," a newspaper at the time proclaimed, "and must not be profaned."

The government bought the theater from Ford and used it over the years as a museum and as an office and storage building.

On the morning of June 9, 1893, the building was packed with 500 government clerks, occupying several floors of jury-rigged office space, when the interior collapsed, according to a Washington Post account the next day. Scores were killed and injured, and the theater's already altered interior was destroyed.

"People thought at that time, 'This is just a cursed building,' " Tetreault said.

The government rebuilt it again -- and again used the building for storage. In the 1950s, the government decided to restore the building as a historic site and theater venue, and Ford's reopened in 1968.

Some of the exterior walls remain from the 1860s, but what is inside is all a reconstruction.

"Nothing in this space is original," Tetreault said as he stood amid the scaffolding Wednesday afternoon. Not the presidential box, not the ceiling, not the stage. "Nothing."

"Now, it was painstakingly restored," he said, based in part on what were essentially crime scene photographs of the interior taken by famed Civil War photographer Mathew Brady.

"Though it is not original," Tetreault said, "there are probably 90 percent of the people that come in this theater that believe that what they're looking at is the exact theater that Abraham Lincoln was shot in, not a replica."

But even a replica can grow haggard over 40 years, Tetreault said, and officials realized that Ford's badly needed to be updated.

Last year, the theater embarked on what has become a $50 million restoration project. The federal government provided $8.9 million, and the theater is raising the rest. So far, it has raised $32 million. The D.C. government has allocated $10 million in its next budget to help with the project and various programs there.

"We have a hard date here," Tetreault said. "It is the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln in February of 2009, and this theater will be open for that."