The interior of Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. collapsed on this day in 1893, killing 22 people in a building that had been the site of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination a few decades earlier. At the time, the building had been serving as a War Department office for administering Civil War pensions. The collapse, while shocking, was not necessarily the biggest surprise.
Employees had complained about the building’s deterioration for years, and many had raised safety concerns. Management was alert to the risks of the old theatre’s condition, even forcing employees leaving for the day to exit in groups by the floor they worked on.
Still, they insisted it was overall safe and worked to modernize it. A construction effort to install electric lights required the excavation of areas under the structure. That digging caused a support pier to collapse, dragging down the whole building’s interior with it.
The collapse was a major scandal of its day; while nobody was ultimately found criminally responsible for the disaster, injured workers and families of the deceased were paid up to $5,000. The building continued serving as a War Department office building for a couple more decades before being converted into the Lincoln Museum. Since 1968, it’s served its original purpose as a theatre as well as a historic site showcasing its place in American history.
