THE September day when the brutal hurricane of 1938 hit the East End started out warm and sunny, but it ended up leaving behind a wasteland of uprooted trees, ruined houses and smashed cars. All that destruction, and more, is chronicled in an exhibition in East Hampton, “The Long Island Express: Rare Photographs of East Hampton Town After the 1938 Hurricane.” The Long Island Express is one of several names by which the hurricane came to be remembered.

The story behind the exhibition, which is on display in the East Hampton Historical Society’s Clinton Academy, began about a year ago, said Richard Barons, the society’s director, when Camilla Jewett, who lives down the street from the museum and who recently turned 101, invited him to tea, as she often does....