Video: 'Disasters Of The Century | Season 4 | Episode 10 | Knickerbocker Theatre Collapse | Ian Coulson'

(Saturday, January 28, 1922, a few minutes before 9:00 p.m. EST; during the Knickerbocker storm) — Ninety-eight people were killed and another 133 were injured tonight when the roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre in Washington, D.C. collapsed under the weight of 29 inches of snow that had fallen in the first 28 hours of a blizzard.

At least 300 people were inside the theater watching the silent movie Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford when the building’s roof fell upon people in the theater balcony, and the balcony itself then fell upon people in the seats below.

Video: 'Blizzard of 1922: Knickerbocker Theater Disaster'

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.