Petersen House

At 7:22am on April 15, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln died on a bed in the Petersen House. The narrow building adjoins to Ford's Theatre and is open for tours.

On the night of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth. He died in the early morning on April 15 in the small back bedroom of a boarding house across the street. Lincoln struggled through the Civil War to preserve the Union and lived long enough to see it maintained—but not long enough to help in healing the wounds left by the war. This gentle man, who abhorred violence, had presided over four years of civil war and now, ironically, became a victim of violence himself. The theatre where Lincoln was shot and the house where he died are preserved today as Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site to tell us of these events, to remind us of the troubling times this Nation passed through and to encourage us to perpetuate the aspirations, the hopes and the ideals that Lincoln held for the United States.