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Harry Ransom Center

The Knickerbocker Theatre Collapse

March 10, 2023 - Harry Ransom Center

Newspaper headline and photograph of a collapsed building

by HANNAH NEUHAUSER

In the 1980s, the Harry Ransom Center received a scrapbook from John and Vera Hills along with an extraordinary unpublished account of their survival of the Knickerbocker Theatre roof collapse in Washington, D.C. on January 28, 1922. The scrapbook and testimony are available for research in the Ransom Center’s Reading and Viewing Room. Graduate assistant Hannah Neuhauser offers these insights on the material.

We started out for an hour’s walk that was to last seven months and almost an eternity…
—FROM JOHN HILLS’S TESTIMONY

Vera Kreger Hills did not wish to go out on the evening of January 28, 1922. It was cold, brutally cold, and a whirring blizzard encased Washington D.C in over two feet of snow.

The weather did not deter her husband, Captain John Huntington Hills, however. He thought it “would be fun to take a stroll through the heavy snow.” After a few blocks, they passed by the Knickerbocker Theatre on 18th Street and Columbia Road. That night the theater was featuring a silent comedy, Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, that heralded good reviews.

Vera Kreger Hills preferred to finish their walk rather than go to the theatre, but consented to her husband’s idea. They had not been in the theatre for over a year. They bought their tickets for 25 cents and took their familiar seats under the balcony in the second row. Unbeknownst to the couple at the time, their seating arrangement would save their lives.

[Read more…] about The Knickerbocker Theatre Collapse

Filed Under: Featured1, Research + Teaching, Theatre + Performing Arts

ABOUT HANNAH NEUHAUSER

Hannah Neuhauser is a PhD musicology student at the Butler School of Music at The University of Texas at Austin. She is a Pathways Fellow serving as a Curatorial Assistant at the Harry Ransom Center in the 2022-2023 term.

Films represented in the Drawing the Motion Picture exhibition

February 10, 2023 - Harry Ransom Center

Many Hollywood classics are featured in the Ransom Center’s Drawing the Motion Picture: Production Art and Storyboards exhibition. Produced by Robert De Niro Curator of Film Steve Wilson, the exhibition reveals behind-the-scenes stories of some of the biggest films in more than 100 years of cinema history through the artworks and designs that shaped their final form. This is a list of films represented in the exhibition on view through July 16, 2023. [Read more…] about Films represented in the Drawing the Motion Picture exhibition

Filed Under: Exhibitions + Events, Featured1, Film Tagged With: Drawing the Motion Picture

Celebrate with us in 2023

December 31, 2022 - Harry Ransom Center

In 2022, friends of the Ransom Center, along with Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, and Leonard Maltin, celebrated our 65th anniversary, establishing an endowment to fund the Robert De Niro Curator of Film position and advancing understanding of the humanities through the Center’s extraordinary film collection. [Read more…] about Celebrate with us in 2023

Filed Under: Exhibitions + Events, Featured1, Film Tagged With: Year-in-Review

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Recent Posts

  • The Knickerbocker Theatre Collapse
  • On the Record: Black Creators and the Jazz Age
  • Ransom Center experience leads to new challenge for Monte Monreal
  • Films represented in the Drawing the Motion Picture exhibition
  • Celebrate with us in 2023

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Ransom Center Magazine is an online and print publication sharing stories and news about the Harry Ransom Center, its collections, and the creative community surrounding it.

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