Smithsonian Institute Archives: Knickerbocker Snowstorm Hits Washington, D.C

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The "Knickerbocker" snowstorm dumps over two feet of snow on the City of Washington. Government employees are sent home, as the city is enveloped by the blizzard. All downtown businesses and buildings close, including the National Museum. In the evening, hundreds of people are trapped in the Knickerbocker Theater when the roof collapses due to the weight of the snow. Over 100 people are killed and many more injured.

The Knickerbocker Theatre in October 1917




The Knickerbocker Theatre from the outside after the collapse of the roof




Interior of the theater after the collapse

The Knickerbocker Theatre was a Washington, D.C. movie theater located at 18th Street and Columbia Road in the Adams Morgan neighborhood. It collapsed on January 28, 1922, under the weight of snow from a two-day blizzard that was later dubbed the Knickerbocker Storm. The theater was showing Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford at the time of the collapse, which killed 98 patrons and injured 133. The disaster ranks as one of the worst in Washington, D.C., history. Former Congressman Andrew Jackson Barchfeld and a number of prominent political and business leaders were among those killed in the theater. The theater's architect, Reginald Geare, and owner, Harry Crandall, later died by suicide, in 1927 and 1937, respectively.

The Knickerbocker Theatre collapse is tied with the Surfside condominium collapse in 2021 as the third-deadliest structural engineering failure in United States history, behind the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse in 1981 and the collapse of the Pemberton Mill in 1860.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knickerbocker_Theatre_(Washington,_D.C.)