Most costly in dollars, but I do not believe in strength, certainly not in lives lost.
Obviously construction standards were inferior to modern ones and no aerial photography or NOAA existed in 1900. All we have to go on is the after pictures and death tolls. Andrew was a massive category 5 storm with reports of automobile-sized holes found in the remains of walls of buildings. Thankfully, my area of the central Florida coast escaped the worst of the storm. It was the worst hurricane ever reported on the Atlantic coast of Florida, according to the NMOAA videos I linked above.