Ambassador Theater (Washington, DC)

The Ambassador Theater was a theater located at 2454 18th Street and Columbia Road, NW, Washington, DC. It was most notable for a six-month period in the 1960s when it was a psychedelic concert and dance hall.

The Ambassador was located at 2454 18th Street and Columbia Road, NW and was on the site where the Knickerbocker Theater once stood. The Knickerbocker Theatre was designed by Reginald Geare and built in 1915 for Harry Crandall, who owned a small chain of theaters in Washington. It had a curved, three-story facade of limestone on red brick in a Georgian Revival style and seated 1,700. On January 22, 1922, 98 people were killed and 136 injured, when the roof of the Knickerbocker collapsed under the weight of thirty inches of snow in what was then the worst disaster in Washington. In 1923, Thomas Lamb built a new theater in the shell of the Knickerbocker, retaining the facade, which would be called the Ambassador. By the 50s, the Ambassador was struggling to compete with television and was suffering from low attendance.

In the 1960s, three men in their early 20s, Joel Mednick, Anthony Finestra and Court Rodgers were selling fire extinguishers on college campuses across the country when they decided to go see what was happening in San Francisco. Inspired by the psychedelic scene and dance halls, they came back to DC and decided to open their own dance hall. The first site the three tried to get was a streetcar barn at K Street and Wisconsin Ave, NW, which they named The Psychedelic Power and Light Company. However, the District police would not issue a license for the use of the building. After being turned down they went after the Ambassador Theater. The captain of that ward mailed out letters to all the area merchants that stated that, "The Psychedelic Power and Light Company was moving into the neighborhood with drugs, long hair and loud music."

It frightened the residents in the area and some of the merchants wrote letters to the police department asking them to deny a permit to the owners. The Ambassador group had to cancel the Grateful Dead, who were booked for June 15, 1967, after posters were already made and equipment was already trucked in. On June 29, 1967, the Washington Star printed "the hippies and the not so hip tangled over whether a total involvement teenage night spot should open or not in Washington". By the time of the meeting, Finestra, Rodgers and Mednick decided not to change the name, instead just leaving it as The Ambassador Theater.

The trio for the Ambassador was backed by some of the local ministers and a decision was promised by July 12. On July 13, 1967 the owners got their permits. During that time, the trio had lost thousands of dollars. They had already booked and lost The Grateful Dead as well as The Doors, plus paid the rent on the Ambassador. The Washington Star wrote, "It will be the city's first way out dance hall".

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