Harry Crandall

Harry Crandall (1879-1937) began building his theater empire when he opened the Casino, at Fourth and East Capitol streets, in 1907. Ownership of the Casino was short lived, with Crandall accepting an offer to purchase it a short time after Crandall’s operation began. In 1910, Crandall again entered the movie business by opening the La Grand Open Air Park, which he described as a fairly good success until its third year, which was unusually rainy. Crandall then decided to open the Joy theater at 437-439 9th Street in 1913. The Joy was Crandall’s springboard to the top of the Washington movie ladder. Crandall identified this period as the time that he started to take the motion picture business seriously. While operating the Joy, he began to dream of a larger theater downtown and one large theater in each section of the city. To fulfill his vision of movie houses throughout Washington, he initially purchased and refurbished existing neighborhood movie houses which were generally modest in size. However, with the Knickerbocker (1917), the Metropolitan (1918), the York (1919), and the Lincoln (1922) Crandall commissioned entirely new buildings designed by Reginald W. Geare. The Metropolitan was located in Washington’s central business core on F Street, a short distance from the Joy. The Knickerbocker, York, and Lincoln, on the other hand, were built outside the business district. Of these four theaters, only the York and Lincoln remain.

At the height of his career he owned eighteen theaters in Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. His theaters were well-regarded in the community and many times featured elegant and opulent designs formerly reserved for opera houses. His chain included such first-rate movie houses as the Apollo, the Metropolitan, the Tivoli, and the ill-fated Knickerbocker, whose roof collapsed in a snow storm killing 98 patrons and injuring more than 100. It is said to have led to the later suicides of both Crandall (1937) and Reginald Geare (1927), the architect.

Crandall was very patriotic, and, as chairman of the exhibitors’ branch of the Americanism Committee of the Motion Picture Industry, he led the fight against “Bolshevism” in the movies. By the summer of 1920, the Crandall chain consisted of ten major theaters in Washington, Cumberland, Martinsburg (West Virginia), and Roanoke (Virginia).

Harry Crandall must have had real empathy for the people of Washington; he constantly used his theaters and position to educate them and provide space for their cultural and civic activities. He created a Public Service and Educational Department and placed it under the direction of prominent Washington club woman and past chairperson of the Motion Picture Committee of the District of Columbia Federated Women’s Clubs, Harriet Hawley Locher. This was one of the first and most ambitious programs of its kind in the country. Crandall and Locher believed that the neighborhood theater could function as a community center, and that it could provide space for educational, cultural, and religious activities when not showing movies. In another move to gain the good will of neighborhood children, Crandall provided equipment for boys’ baseball teams. There were four teams: the Savoy, the York, the Apollo, and the Avenue Grand.

In 1925, Harry Crandall sold 75 percent of his theater interests to the Stanley Company of Philadelphia, forming the new Stanley-Crandall Company. Crandall retained 25 percent ownership and became the executive of the company, then among the four largest theatrical organization in the country. In 1927 Warner Brothers purchased the Stanley-Crandall Company. Harry Crandall retired from active participation in the operation of theaters in 1929.

References

• Historic Landmark Nomination for the York Theater 2012.