Jake Flack, Associate Director of Museum Education, reflects on how the Civil War affected the economy of his hometown of Washington, D.C. 

Learn how Ford's is integrating Virtual Reality into our visitor's experience and how you can try it from home or on site!

Don’t live in D.C.? Not a student? Never fear, Ford’s Theatre programming is accessible to those near and far! Learn about four of our virtual programs that bring history to life via an internet connection. 

In the years leading up to April 1865, William and Anna Petersen, both German immigrants, owned and occupied the Petersen House. They raised 10 children on the second and third floors of the home, while opening the basement and first floors to strangers. April 14 changed their family forever.

While many depictions of the events surrounding President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination exist, most are artist renditions, created well after the fact. As of April 14, 2016, visitors to the Ford’s Theatre campus may now see the only known artistic representation of the Lincoln assassination created by an eyewitness. 

Today, we often think of the Petersen House as the “other part” of Ford’s Theatre National Historic site. But in 1893, a group of prominent Washingtonians had another idea: They planned for the Petersen House to be a national monument to President Abraham Lincoln. 

Every time I set foot in the house where Lincoln died I think about William T. Clark. In my work as the Associate Director of Museum Education at Ford’s, I get to spend a lot of time in that house and I often think about the man who had rented the back bedroom on the first floor of William Petersen’s boarding house on Tenth Street the week of Lincoln's assassination.