WASHINGTON MOVIE THEATRES and DRIVE-INS

KNICKERBOCKER
2454 18th St NW
October 13 th , 1917-1922
Harry M. Crandall owned it.
The Knickerbocker Theatre was built in 1915 for Harry
M. Crandall, who owned a small chain of theaters in
Washington, including the Lincoln and Metropolitan
Theatres (and later, the Tivoli). Reginald Geare on
Columbia Road designed it, with a sedate Georgian
Revival facade that followed a curve on Columbia Road.
The three-story facade, of limestone on red brick, also
had touches of Colonial Revival and neoclassical styles.
The interior of the 1700-seat movie house was a
graceful and not overly decorated blend of Adam and
neoclassical styles.
On January 22nd, 1922, during an intermission in the hit
comedy film, "Get Rich Quick Wallingford", while the
orchestra was playing, the Knickerbocker's poorly
constructed roof collapsed after a heavy snowstorm
over the past two days piled almost two feet of snow on
it. After the cave-in, 98 people were killed and 136
injured, in what was then Washington's worst disaster.
Crandall closed all of his theaters in sympathy for the
dead after the Knickerbocker disaster for a week, and
was not charged with any wrongdoing, which was not
the case of Geare, whose career as the most popular
theater architect in the District of Columbia up until
that time came to an abrupt end. He killed himself in
1927, as did Crandall, who later went bankrupt, a
decade later.
In 1923, Thomas Lamb was hired to built a new theater
in the shell of the Knickerbocker, which would be called
the Ambassador. (Crandall would also replace Geare
with Lamb on his next project, the Tivoli Theatre).
Lamb's theater retained Geare's facade, which Lamb
would embellish, but the rest of the theater was all new.
Lamb's interior was a blend of Adam and neoclassic
styles, somewhat more ornate than the Knickerbocker,
but nearly the same size.
By the 50s, the Ambassador was struggling to keep up
with competition from television, and its owners opted
to raze the historic theater in 1969, after years of low
attendance. A bank was constructed on the site in 1978.
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