Ford's Theatre
Washington, DC · Downtown$
The red brick on Tenth Street looks ordinary until you remember what happened in the box above the stage on an April night in 1865. Inside, the restored auditorium still hosts…
Photo: Billy Hathorn / CC BY 3.0 · source
Attractions
Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery
About
Walt Whitman called the Old Patent Office Building, now home to the National Portrait Gallery at 8th and G Streets NW, "the noblest of Washington buildings." During the Civil War it served as a hospital and a morgue, and he came to attend to the wounded. Lincoln's second inaugural ball was held there in March 1865. The gallery shares the building with the Smithsonian American Art Museum and stays open until 7 p.m., so leave it for the end of the day. America's Presidents, on the second floor, includes an 1843 daguerreotype of John Quincy Adams, the earliest known photograph of a president, and 1917 casts of Lincoln's life masks.
Highlights
Free admission, open daily 11:30am to 7pmAmerica's Presidents: the only complete presidential portrait set outside the White HouseKehinde Wiley's portrait of Barack ObamaThe glass-roofed Robert and Arlene Kogod CourtyardHoused in the historic Old Patent Office Building, a former Civil War hospital
