50 TEQUESTA


return to Miami until after the quarantine ceased. The camp finally
closed on December 2.39
 Meanwhile, back in Miami, the situation grew worse daily. The
need for a hospital became urgent. The City Hospital, built at North-
east Ninth Avenue and Biscayne Boulevard, was completed shortly
after September 22.4' Badgered by the expenses of the epidemic,
however, the city had no funds to carry out its part of the bargain
originally promised to Henry Flagler. An appeal was made to the
State Board of Health but their coffers were empty. Thus it appears
that this hospital did not take patients during the epidemic of 1899.
There might have been another reason for the fact that this new
building, whose construction cost $7,805.64, was not used to avoid
contaminating it with yellow fever.41

 Emergency Hospital Built

 Into the breach stepped W. W. Prout, a civic minded contractor
and secretary of the Miami Relief Association. He agreed to build an
Emergency Hospital, paying for it out of his own pocket and awaiting
repayment, if any came. During a downpour on Sunday, October 27,
Prout's men began construction of the facility, completing it the fol-
lowing Wednesday, with water and sewer connections in place, and
ready to receive patients. The single-story frame building, which
measured 18 by 88 feet, extended along Northeast First Avenue
from Northeast Third Street to Fourth Street. The hospital consisted
of "four wards, [an] office, baths and full working equipment."42













The Hotel Miami, built in 1896, served as a hospital foryellow fever patients.
(HASF 75-25-143)