Knickerbocker Theatre (Washington, D.C.)

The Knickerbocker Theatre was a Washington, D.C., United States, 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 incident is the deadliest building collapse in American history, and the second deadliest non-dam structural failure, behind the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse.

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