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Ford's Theatre Plans New Complex
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[October 27, 2007]
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The theater where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated will be renovated and made part of a six-building complex that includes multimedia educational displays on the legacy of the nation's 16th president, the Ford's Theatre Society said Friday.
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 A planned education center across the street from the working theater will include new exhibits aimed at providing a deeper look at the events leading up to and following the assassination, as well as a look at 1860s Washington.
The theater's notoriously uncomfortable seats will also be replaced and its restrooms renovated. Adjacent buildings will house a new lobby and elevators to make the historic theater accessible to the disabled, theater officials said.
Plans for the complex include recreated street scenes from the morning after the assassination and a desk with a touchscreen where people can "look over Lincoln's shoulder" at Civil War dispatches, speech drafts and other documents.
The new content "will provide a deeper understanding of the historical context behind not only the days in April of 1865 when Lincoln died, but behind every day of his remarkable presidency," said Rex Tillerson, chairman and chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp. and chairman of the theater's $40 million fundraising campaign.
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 More than $22 million has already been raised, mostly from corporate sponsors, Tillerson said.
The nonprofit Ford's Theatre Society produces the shows at the theater and works closely with the National Park Service, which owns the theater and the Petersen House across the street, where Lincoln died on April 15, 1865, the morning after the shooting.
Artifacts such as the derringer that John Wilkes Booth used to shoot Lincoln will remain on display.
The renovated performance space is scheduled to open in time for the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth on Feb. 12, 2009. The new education center next to the Petersen House will open later.
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On the Net:
Ford's Theatre: http://www.fordstheatre.org/
[Associated Press;
By SARAH KARUSH]
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
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