A Photographer Records Miami After the Great Hurricane

September 25, 1926 — William A. Fishbaugh photographs the aftermath.

By Wm. E. McMullen II

One week after one of the most destructive hurricanes in Florida history tore through South Florida, photographer William A. Fishbaugh took his camera into battered Miami.

It was September 25, 1926.

Miami Before the Storm

Miami in the mid-1920s was booming. Florida's land boom had attracted developers, investors, tourists and new residents. Then the Great Miami Hurricane struck on September 18, damaging or destroying thousands of buildings across South Florida.

One Week Later

Florida Memory preserves Fishbaugh's exact-date photograph of heavily damaged buildings in Miami. The image is not a photograph of the hurricane itself. In some ways it tells us more: it records what residents confronted after the wind stopped.

The Second Disaster

Major hurricanes produce an immediate emergency and a long recovery. Shelter, roads, utilities, businesses, insurance, reconstruction and family losses become the next problems. Because the storm struck while Florida's speculative land boom was already weakening, the destruction added another severe economic blow.

Why Photographs Matter

Numbers can describe pressure, wind and losses. A photograph lets us stand on a Miami street one week later. Fishbaugh preserved details that otherwise disappear: construction, failed walls, wreckage and the scale of damage.

September 18 tells us when the hurricane arrived. September 25 shows us what it left behind.

Sources for Additional Reading

• Florida Memory — Fishbaugh hurricane damage photograph