U.S. Colonial Puerto Rico and San Juan Hurricane Destruction in Early Twentieth-Century Photographs

Caribbean Puerto Rico

Photograph

Puerto Rico photo archive, circa 1910s and 1928, documents colonial-era social conditions and hurricane destruction in the decades after the United States took control of the island. The archive centers on two related subjects: a large group portrait of Puerto Rican adults and children gathered outside a long arched building, and press images of San Juan after the September 13, 1928 San Felipe Segundo hurricane. The photographs provide visual evidence of everyday poverty, built environment, disaster damage, and public movement through wreckage during a period shaped by U.S. civil government under the Foraker Act of 1900 and U.S. citizenship without voting representation in Congress under the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917.

Puerto Rico photo archive. Puerto Rico, circa late 1910s and 1928. Three silver gelatin photographs, with two images printed on one press sheet. Sizes range from 5 x 9 inches to 8.5 x 11 inches. The 1928 press photograph contains two stacked photojournalistic views of San Juan after the hurricane, showing torn corrugated roofing, broken utility poles, damaged structures, debris-filled streets, and residents, including children and laborers, moving through the wreckage. The larger earlier image shows a white man standing before a long arched tenement-style or institutional building, surrounded by Puerto Rican women, men, and numerous children, many barefoot and wearing worn or minimal clothing; the image appears posed or observational, but the man’s role is not identified.

The San Felipe Segundo hurricane struck Puerto Rico on September 13, 1928, as a Category 5 storm and caused 312 reported deaths, widespread housing destruction, and several hundred thousand people left homeless, giving the press images strong value as disaster documentation within a colonial setting. The earlier group photograph broadens the archive beyond catastrophe, recording visible poverty, dress, housing, and racialized colonial social relations without requiring unsupported identification of the white figure. Some edge wear, tape on margins of smaller image, and original editor’s markings en verso to press photograph; very good. A compact Puerto Rico photo archive linking colonial-era social conditions with one of the island’s most destructive twentieth-century hurricanes.

Item #21918

Price: $450.00