Ford’s Theatre Serves as Second Memorial to Abraham Lincoln : Stage: The landmark dedicated to the President’s love of the performing arts begins its 25th-anniversary season next month.

“Everyone who comes into the theater is absolutely drawn to that box. No question about it,” said Anthony Bruno, medical director of the Maryland State Prison System.

Bruno was staring at the flag-draped theater box overlooking the proscenium stage minutes before the musical “Conrack” was about to begin. Stu Kingsley, an Anchorage, Alaska, ad-agency owner, in a seat behind Bruno, mused:

“That’s quite a jump--12 feet, they say--from the box to the stage. Obviously he was desperate enough to make the leap after shooting the President. . . .”

The two men were in the audience of what surely must be America’s most famous theater, Ford’s Theatre, where Abraham Lincoln was gunned down April 14, 1865, by actor John Wilkes Booth, while watching the British comedy “Our American Cousins.”

At the performance of “Conrack,” which has since closed, every one of the 600 seats in the theater was occupied, typical of what happened six evenings and two matinees a week throughout the year.

During the day, 600 seats are repeatedly filled for 20-minute interpretive talks by National Park Service rangers. The theater and the boarding house across the street where Lincoln died are the Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site.

Ranger Larry Coleman at one of the interpretive talks described what happened that terrible night 127 years ago when Booth fatally wounded Lincoln:

“Booth enters the box. It is Act III, Scene 2, at 10:15 p.m. The President and everyone in the theater erupts in laughter at a funny line by Harry Hawk, the lone actor on stage. At that moment, Booth fires his .44-caliber single-shot pistol 10 inches behind the President’s ear. The bullet comes to rest behind Mr. Lincoln’s right eye.

“Seated in the box with the President are Mrs. Lincoln, Maj. Henry Reed Rathbone and his fiancee, Clara Harris. Rathbone grabs for Booth and is stabbed by the actor, who then leaps from the box onto the stage, waving his bloody dagger above his head and shouting: ‘Sic semper tyrannis! (Thus be it forever for tyrants!)’ ”

Booth escapes on horseback and is shot and killed by soldiers 12 days later in a barn near Port Royal, Va.

In a back room at the Petersen Boarding House where Lincoln was carried after being shot, the President died nine hours later. Ranger Michael Maione points to a pillow on the spool spindle bed, noting: “Those stains are President Lincoln’s blood. The pillowcase was never washed.”

Maione adds: “The President never knew what hit him. When the bullet penetrated his head he was brain dead. He could not see, hear or think. His last conscious act on Earth was laughing at a remark made by actor Harry Hawk on stage.”

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Ford’s Theatre had only been opened a year and a half. It was the favorite place for Lincoln. He loved the theater. He had been there 10 times during his presidency. “The theater rests me. A hearty laugh relieves me,” he told theatergoers one night.

At one of the performances attended by the President, on Nov. 9, 1863, Booth played the lead role in “Richard III.” Booth, a Southern sympathizer who saw Lincoln as a source of the South’s problems, reportedly sneered at Lincoln during the play.

Lincoln was assassinated five days after Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia.

Ford’s Theatre was closed immediately by the government. Famed Civil War photographer Mathew Brady was hired to take detailed photographs of the theater’s interior for the investigation of the shooting and trial of the conspirators.

The theater was converted into a government office building. Then on June 9, 1893, tragedy struck again. All three floors collapsed, killing 22 workers and injuring 68 others. After that, the building was used for storage until 1932 when the National Park Service acquired it and opened a Lincoln museum.

In 1965, work began to restore the theater as it was the night Lincoln was shot, based on the Brady photographs, complete with the crystal wall sconces, wine-red carpeting, 19th-Century wall moldings.

The red sofa Maj. Rathbone was sitting on and the engraving of Washington that hung on the front of the President’s box are where they were when the assassination occurred. The chairs in the theater are reproductions of the originals.

Harry Hawk was the last actor to perform at Ford’s Theatre until Helen Hayes walked onto the stage 103 years later, Jan. 21, 1968, when it was reopened as a living memorial dedicated to Abraham Lincoln’s love of the performing arts.

For everyone who visits Ford’s Theatre or sees a drama, revue or one-person show performed, there is a unique mystique, an eerie feeling that Lincoln is still sitting in that flag-draped, empty box.

In the basement of the theater, the National Park Service operates a museum. Among items on display are the derringer used by Booth to kill Lincoln and the dagger used to stab Maj. Rathbone, the clothes the President wore that night, his frock coat, black silk tie, waistcoat and trousers.

The living theater at the historic site is privately operated by a nonprofit group, Ford’s Theatre Society, sustained by ticket sales and a board of governors of nearly 100 executives whose companies support the theater with annual donations of $5,000 or more.

Frankie Hewitt, the driving force behind the reopening of the theater, is its executive producer. Under her guidance, many successful productions have been launched here including the musical “Elmer Gantry” and James Whitmore’s “Will Rogers’ U.S.A.”

In its 142 productions since reopening in 1968, Ford’s Theatre Society has developed numerous new works that explore and examine the American experience, rediscover and present lost pieces of the nation’s collective history.

Since the theater reopened, every sitting President has attended performances. A White House reception precedes the theater’s traditional annual gala.

Ford’s Theatre’s 25th anniversary season opens Sept. 9 with the world premiere musical “Captains Courageous,” directed by four-time Tony nominee Graciela Daniele. The production will run through November.