Petersen House

The Petersen House is a narrow, three-story brick row house with a plain wooden front door and a low set of stone steps. It served as a boarding house in eighteen sixty-five when William Petersen, a German tailor, operated it. On the night of April fourteenth, soldiers carried a mortally wounded Abraham Lincoln across the street from Ford’s Theatre and into a small back bedroom here. He died in that room at seven twenty-two the next morning, surrounded by government officials and family.