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. It is tied with the Surfside, Florida condominium collapse as the third-deadliest structural engineering failure in United States history.
It took more than 24 hours to recover the injured and dead from the wreckage. A temporary morgue was set up at the nearby First Church of Christ, Scientist (now The Line DC hotel). Some of the victims were crushed so badly they were unrecognizable and had to be identified based on clothing and personal effects. There were amazing stories of survival, too, says Ambrose. Some people in the middle of the theater were unscathed — the roof folded as it fell, creating some pockets of safety amid the wreckage. Others were just quick or lucky. A Washington Post drama critic was in attendance to review the movie, and was saved by his habit of sitting in an aisle seat near an exit door. “He liked to move around during the show,” says Ambrose. “He was able to step out into the lobby just in time and missed the crash.”
The critic, John Jay Daly, rushed across the street to a drugstore to call in the news to his editors, then returned to the theater to help with the rescue. Later that night, he walked through the snowy streets to the Washington Post headquarters downtown to file his story — a dramatic 5,000-word account that was published in the Sunday paper the next morning.
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