It was the era of the silent movie. The orchestra had just struck up the overture to the main attraction. Beneath the proscenium the screen lit up, dust motes dancing on a white square. And then, from above, came a creak, and then a hiss, and then a shuddering roar.
Because the streets were nearly impassable, the moviegoers had mostly trudged on foot to the theater at Columbia Road and 18th Street NW. The crowd, which had been snowbound for days, was young and festive. There were many, many children.
The Knickerbocker Theatre collapse remains to this day the greatest disaster in Washington history, and its ghosts lingered for decades. Fifteen years afterward, theater owner Harry M. Crandall, once a millionaire but by then a pauper crippled by guilt, gassed himself to death in a Washington hotel room.
The story that follows is excerpted from The Washington Post of Jan. 29 and 30, 1922. It stands as some of the finest deadline journalism of its time, or any time. As was the custom, newspaper stories did not carry bylines. The names of the writers are lost to history. 98 DEAD, BURIED UNDER RUIN OF KNICKERBOCKER THEATRE WOUNDED ARE SLOWLY DRAGGED FROM TANGLED MASS OF THE DEBRIS Relatives Weep in Vain At Yawning Doors Of Wrecked Building Grim Tragedy Descends On Light-Hearted Crowd Gathered to View Film Comedy
The roof of Crandall's Knickerbocker Theatre caved in last night shortly before 9 o'clock, killing a number of people and imperiling the lives of others. No accurate number of dead was determined, and rescuers state as their belief that it would be many hours before the full extent of the tragedy was known. It is estimated that 150 persons may have lost their lives. Weight of the snow on the roof is given as the cause of the accident.
With a roar, mighty as the crack of doom, the massive roof of the Knickerbocker broke loose from its steel moorings and crashed down upon the heads of those in the balcony. Under the weight of the fallen roof, the balcony gave way. Most of the audience was entombed. It was as sudden as the turning off of an electric light.
The theater at the time of the terrible crash was well filled. The second show of the night was just getting under way. "Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford," George M. Cohan's celebrated comedy, was billed as the feature film of the evening.
No description will do justice to the awfulness of the tragedy. In loss of life, the world's record of catastrophes contains many of greater magnitude. Few except those wrought by war ever brought death as swiftly or mercilessly as it was dealt to the men, women and children caught last night like rats in a trap of masonry and ice.
The labor of rescue was incomparably difficult. The standing walls, unroofed as clean as if a giant's knife had just cut the top off and left no vestige of it, enveloped a wild jumble of concrete, twisted steel, tangled railings, boulders of snow and indiscriminate tangles of wood and iron that a few moments before were the furnishings of a playhouse de luxe.
Upon roughly half of the victims only the roof, with its deadly crust of snow, had fallen. Upon the rest, including those with seats beneath the balcony, not only the roof but the balcony, with its extra weight of human beings, piled down.
There thus were two layers of death, as if in a cake. Victims caught in the balcony were impounded between the collapsing roof and the masonry of the balcony and then were hurled headlong onto the heads of another stratum of victims on the main floor.
When the crash first came, it was followed by the screams of women and the shouts of men. Agonizing cries pierced the air. One woman, in particular, shouted at the top of her voice -- shouted not for help, or aid, or succor; because she was probably not conscious of what had happened. Her shouts were the gasps of the dying, and doctors said so.
In the lobby of the theater, firemen and policemen and strong civilians worked as best they could in an endeavor to extricate the wounded and the dead. It was a task that tried the souls of men.
As word of the tragedy passed from one person to another, crowds gathered on the outside of Crandall's Knickerbocker theater. In all appearances nothing had happened, for on the outside of the theater lights blazed, and to all intents, the show might well be going on. No damage had been done to the front, nor to the lobby of the structure. Those standing there in the doorway knew different, however, for they were the loved ones of men and women and children imprisoned inside. They had been told what happened.
"I've got to get in there," a young woman shouted, when told she could not enter. "I've got to get in there because my mother's at this show." SEEKS LOST BRIDE
A man came to the entrance, willing to fight his way in if necessary. He was the husband of a young bride who, with a girl friend, had attended the theater.
"You can't hold me back," he cried. "I've got to get in there. Mary's there, and she wants me with her."
It took three able-bodied policemen to hold him back.
Dr. J.H. Canine, 2311 Eighteenth St., with Mrs. Canine, were sitting in the last row of the balcony. They saw the ceiling crack and then came the crash. The impact pushed them into the aisle. They felt their way down the stairs and Dr. Canine discovered that his left arm was broken. Despite his injuries, Dr. Canine went back and began to treat the few injured that were brought out immediately. He continued to work until other physicians arrived and then had his arm cared for. He was the first physician to begin work.
The second physician who responded to the call for help was Dr. Joseph F. Elward of the Northumberland Apartments, who happend to be visiting a patient in a nearby home. His first patient proved the terrific impact of the crash. The man treated by Dr. Elward was a young Jewish fellow whose right arm had been completely torn from his shoulder. The man was in a semiconscious state and did not know the extent of his injuries, for he exclaimed, as Dr. Elward was dressing him:
"My soul, doctor, you're cutting off my arm."
His arm had already gone -- lost under the timber.
The Knickerbocker Candy Store was converted into a temporary hospital. Tables that are ordinarily used for festive parties, where ice cream and sodas are served, were put together, three in a row, and made over into impromptu operating tables. Gallant women of the neighborhood immediately volunteered as nurses. PARENTS WATCH FOR CHILDREN.
It was a scene never to be forgotten by those who arrived in the early stages of excitement. Hatless, fathers whose children were in the ill-fated structure stood and pleaded for a chance to see if their little ones were in need of help. Mothers, with tears in their eyes, stood with shawls draped over their shoulder and around their heads, crying, unable to utter even a word that might tell their mission.
Minutes seemed ages. Hundreds of people were trapped in their seats and not a hand seemed raised to help them. Yet, everybody was doing all in human power to lend assistance. Telephones were started buzzing in an effort to get medical relief from the hospitals throughout the city. Every physician in the neighborhood was implored, by men and women knocking at their doors, to come to the scene.
Under a sky that was filled with falling snow flakes, the roof of the Knickerbocker theater was spread, a crumpled mass, between the four walls. It lay there, heavily laden with snow, on top of orchestra seats and balcony seats, in which a few minutes before its fall, had been seated probably 900 persons prepared to enjoy a comedy.
Tragedy trekked treacherously in the course of comedy, and no man present in the work of clearing away that fallen roof had the nerve or cared to say just what might be buried there. Old time medical practitioners, men who have seen appalling things in the clinic and the operating room, went among the rescue workers and bade them keep their minds off of speculation, warned them to busy themselves with the work of rescue, and forget the imagination.
This word of warning was made necessary, after several stalwart men had fainted.
A 19-year-old girl, just released from beneath chunks of concrete which had held her pinioned for two hours, was brought out on a stretcher. Her hair was tousled, her clothes awry, but her flushed face was without a scratch. She must have undergone supreme torture, yet she was smiling, almost laughing. It was the mirth of hysteria, perhaps, but whatever it was, she was as game as a Spartan mother. Red Cross helpers were huddling her into a blanket. "There's nothing wrong with me," she almost chuckled.
There were many who came forth from the death pit like that -- apparently unhurt, half suffocated, lacerated, but unafraid and uncomplaining. The girl who would not wince coaxed a tear from a begrimed fireman. "It takes the women folks to suffer," was his pungent tribute to her sex. Boy Burrows Way to Buried Victims To Ease Their Pain
Keeping life in the victim of the disaster until rescuers could chop away the debris which imprisoned them was one of the difficult tasks that confronted physicians.
Narcotic tablets were administered to many of the victims to ease their pain. Physicians were forced to invent means of getting the tablets to their patients. One physician burrowed beneath the wreckage until he could reach the lips of a half-conscious man. To another man, tablets were passed through an opening in the wreckage at the end of a long stick.
A small boy, whose name could not be learned, helped keep life in a group of victims trapped far back under the place where the balcony had been. He forced his body through a small opening in the debris far enough to reach tablets to several victims.
Perhaps the saddest chapter in the whole dire tragedy was recorded when a little lad barely nine went to Christian Science church yesterday morning and in sorrow too deep for childhood to understand, identified the bodies of his father and mother and two sisters. He was Master Kanston, of Chicago, sole survivor of a family of five. The bodies of his father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Oscar G. Kanston, and his sisters Helen and Anlyn, will today start on the journey to Chicago for burial. Horrors of Scenes Related by Youths; Two Girls' Heads Cut Off
Lying in Emergency hospital last night, Moe Gold, 20, a Georgetown University law student, told his story as follows:
"I was sitting in the second row of the orchestra. Suddenly a sinister sort of a whistling noise above my head made me look up. It was exactly the noise made by the whine of a bullet through the air. Then, to my horror, I saw the roof of the theater open and down it came with a splitting crash that I will never forget. The whole world seemed to fall on me and I don't remember anything for some time, perhaps an hour.
"I was almost sorry when I did come to, for the screams of the injured seemed to ring to heaven. I could hear and feel horribly suffering people trying to wiggle out of the debris like mangled worms. Then I heard footsteps above my head of rescuers. I shouted and shouted. Some one heard, for they dislodged enough of the concrete covering to put down a long glass tube full of brandy. I took a long drink."
James H. Davidson, 22, of Portland, Me., another Georgetown student, who was sitting in the balcony of the theater when the crash came, was the first man to get outside without help.
"I was sitting midway back in the balcony. The orchestra was playing a lively tune. Then came the warning. It was a rending noise, like tearing a piece of canvas quickly. The ominous sound preceded the actual crash by about three seconds. But I was too paralyzed with horror to move a muscle. It was that helplessness you have in a nightmare.
"I saw the whole roof come tumbling in and crash down on the heads of the audience below. It struck the balcony where I was sitting first, before tearing down below. The balcony swayed under my feet, then broke off a couple of rows in front of me and went down into the orchestra. I was pinned in my seat by debris. I looked around, and to my horror saw two young girls in front of me with their heads cut off. They seemed to be leaning forward, asleep. It was sickening." Dying Man Urges Rescue of Others; Held by Dead Girl's Arm.
"For God's sake, help the women. I'm all right."
Lying prone under thousands of pounds of steel girders, plaster and cement, Scott Montgomery, the last man to be taken from the scene of the disaster alive, but suffering fatal wounds, thus exhorted the men who for hours strove to extricate him.
Beside him, with one arm around him, lay the body of Veronica Murphy, the girl who had gone out with him early Saturday night for entertainment.
Twelve hours, conscious all the time, and with perfect possession of his faculties, Montgomery pleaded with his resuers to "leave me alone and get Veronica and the others out."
Montgomery's legs were almost severed from his body by the weight of a steel girder. His head was crushed under a weight of debris.
After an acetylene torch had cut the girder which held him, Montgomery still protested that they should take out others first. It was impossible to lift him from his position because Miss Murphy's arm was over him and it was not until doctors had broken this that he was finally taken out and carried to Walter Reed hospital. He died there at 11 o'clock in the morning. A COAL MINER'S ESCAPE
Long experience in coal mines enabled W. H. Morris, a 63-year-old retired coal mine manager of Buckhannon, W. Va., to escape from the death trap in the center of the Knickerbocker.
"I was in the eighth row from the front," Mr. Morris said yesterday, "when I heard a crack, a sort of ripping sound, exactly like that which the slate roof of a coal measure makes when it is going to let go. It was more instinct than anything else that brought me to my feet with one thought flashing through my mind: I can beat that fall to the outside.
"As I came into the aisle I saw the orchestra leader's baton waving with the music and a little white cloud coming down above his head. Then I ran up the aisle, with the roof cracking and falling above me. As I got to the floor the stuff began to hit me in a wave of wind from behind which literally flung me through the door and across the lobby to the sidewalk.
"I saw no one else moving as I went up the aisle," he continued. "I can't forget that orchestra leader with that cloud forming just above his head." BRIDEGROOM DIES; LIFE DREAM ENDED
Joseph Wade Beal, first violinist at the Knickerbocker theater, was a happy bridegroom last Tuesday. His honeymoon lasted until Saturday night, when the roof caved in at the Knickerbocker where he was playing first violin in the orchestra. Today the widowed bride sits in their darkened little home, and friends try in vain to console her for this sudden and stunning loss.
But that is not all of the story. The rest of it is about a man's dream and how it ended on Saturday night -- at the Knickerbocker. Everyone on newspaper row knows "Ben" Beal, the veteran telegraph operator.
Beal is from North Carolina, and his one absorbing passion has been violins.
Through an accident in his young manhood, Beal lost one arm, and therefore has never been able to play his beloved instrument. But that has not prevented him making violins, and rebuilding them, and he can judge the tone of an instrument and make it over to suit any master's taste.
After Beal had been in Washington a few years he married. When his first born, Joseph Wade Beal was born some 30 years ago, Beal began to dream that his boy should one day become a great violinist.
As soon as little Joe was big enough to hold a bow, his father set him at the task of mastering the violin. Joe was a ready student, and when only a lad was regarded as a child prodigy at the difficult art. Joe Beal developed considerable promise and began orchestral work in order to carry on his studies so he might in time become a virtuoso. During the war he enlisted in the navy and played in the Navy Yard band, making several tours of the country with the band. The war over, he went to the task of making his father's dream come true.
But he played his last note Saturday night. And Ben Beal's dream is ended. Sandra Fleishman assisted with research for this article. CAPTION: On Jan. 28, 1922, a record 26-inch snowfall collapsed the roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre on more than 900 patrons. For two days afterward, rescuers recovered bodies. In all, 98 people died and 158 more were injured. CAPTION: Removing the last of the dead from the remains of the Knickerbocker's balcony. CAPTION: The only photo made inside the theater the night of the tragedy. Workers use an acetylene torch to free persons trapped under the rubble. The canopy at left housed ventilating equipment on the roof, until it crashed through onto the orchestra pit.
