We left the Statue of Liberty,
boarded the ferry and headed over to Eliis Island. Over one hundred million
Americans can claim ancestors who came through Ellis Island. “There were
probably as many reasons for coming to America,” wrote President John F. Kennedy
in a A Nation of Immigrants, “As there were people who came.” Religious
persecution, political strife, unemployment, family connections, the lure of
adventure: these were the circumstances of the greatest migration in modern
history, when shipload after shipload of people, mostly Europeans, came to the
United States. In the decade after the American Revolution, about five thousand
people immigrated to the U.S. every year. By the early 1900’s, that many arrived
at Ellis Island each day, with a record 11,747 on the 17th of April 1907. All
told, some twelve million came through Ellis Island.
Ellis Island in New York Harbor was the gateway for millions of
immigrants to the United States. It was the nation's busiest
immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. The island was greatly
expanded with landfill between 1892 and 1934. Before
that, the much smaller original island was the site of Fort Gibson and later a
naval magazine. The island was made part
of the Statue of Liberty National Monument in 1965 and has hosted a
museum of immigration since 1990. A 1998 US Supreme Court decision found most of the island to be part of New Jersey.
Geography and access:
Ellis Island has a land area of 27.5
acres. The original portion of the island is 3.3 acres and is an exclave of New
York City, while reclaimed areas are part of Jersey City. The entire island has
been owned and administered by the U.S. federal government since 1808. It is
currently operated by the National Park Service. Public access is by ferry from
either Communipaw Terminal in Liberty State Park or from Battery Park at the
southern tip of Manhattan. The route we took. The same ferry routes provide
service to the nearby Statue of Liberty. A bridge built for transporting
materials and personnel during restoration projects connects Ellis Island with
Liberty State Park, but is not open to the public. Proposals made in 1995 to use
it or replace it with a new bridge for pedestrians were opposed by the city of
New York and the private ferry operator at that time, Circle Line. Since the
11th of September 2001, the island is guarded by patrols of the US Park Police
Marine Patrol Unit.
Ownership: Originally much of the west shore of Upper
New York Bay consisted of large tidal flats which hosted vast oyster banks, a
major source of food for the Lenape population who lived in the area prior to
the arrival of Dutch settlers. There were several islands which were not
completely submerged at high tide but most of them were submerged. Three of them
(later to be known as Liberty, Black Tom and Ellis) were given the name Oyster
Islands by the settlers of New Netherlands the first European colony in the
Mid-Atlantic states. The oyster beds would remain a major source of food for
nearly three centuries. Landfilling to build the railyards of the Lehigh Valley
Railroad and the Central Railroad of New Jersey would eventually obliterate the
beds, engulf one island and bring the shoreline much closer to the others.
During the Colonial period Little Oyster Island was known as Dyre's, then
Bucking Island. In the 1760’s, after some pirates were hanged from one of the
island's scrubby trees, it became known as Gibbet Island. It was acquired by
Samuel Ellis, a colonial New Yorker possibly from Wales, around the time of the
American Revolution. In 1785 he unsuccessfully attempted to sell the
island:
TO BE SOLD
By Samuel Ellis, no. 1,
Greenwich Street, at the north river near the Bear Market, That pleasant
situated Island called Oyster Island, lying in New York Bay, near Powle's Hook,
together with all its improvements which are considerable;...
—Samuel Ellis advertising in Loudon's
New York-Packet, January 20, 1785
New York State leased the
island in 1794 and started to fortify it in 1795. Ownership was in question and
legislation was passed for acquisition by condemnation in 1807 and then ceded to
the U.S. in 1808. Shortly thereafter the War Department established a twenty-gun
battery, magazine, and barracks. From 1808 until 1814 it was a federal arsenal.
At the end of the War of 1812, Fort Gibson was built and the island remained a
military post for nearly eighty years before it was selected to be a federal
immigration station.
Immigration
station: In the thirty five years before Ellis Island
opened, over eight million immigrants arriving in New York had been processed by
New York State officials at Castle Garden Immigration Depot in lower Manhattan,
just across the bay. The Federal Government assumed control of immigration on
the 18th of April 1890 and Congress appropriated $75,000 to construct America's
first Federal immigration station on Ellis Island. Artesian wells were dug, and
landfill was hauled in from incoming ships' ballast and from construction of New
York City's subway tunnels, which doubled the size of Ellis Island to over six
acres. While the building was under construction, the Barge Office nearby at the
Battery was used for immigrant processing. The first federal immigration station
was an enormous three-story tall structure, with out-buildings, built of Georgia
pine, containing all of the amenities that were thought to be necessary. It
opened with celebration on the 1st of January 1892. Three large ships landed on
the first day and 700 immigrants passed over the docks. Almost 450,000
immigrants were processed at the station during its first year. On the 15th of
June 1897, a fire of unknown origin, possibly caused by faulty wiring, turned
the wooden structures on Ellis Island into ashes. No loss of life was reported,
but most of the immigration records dating back to 1855 were destroyed. About
1.5 million immigrants had been processed at the first building during its five
years of use. Plans were immediately made to build a new, fireproof immigration
station on Ellis Island. During the construction period, passenger arrivals were
again processed at the Barge Office.
Edward Lippincott Tilton and William A. Boring won the 1897 competition
to design the first phase, including the Main Building (1897–1900), Kitchen and
Laundry Building (1900–01), Main Powerhouse (1900–01), and the Main Hospital
Building (1900–01). The present main structure was designed in French
Renaissance Revival style and built of red brick with
limestone trim. When it opened on the 17th of December 1900, officials estimated
5,000 immigrants per day would be processed. However, the facilities proved to
be able to barely handle the flood of immigrants that arrived in the years just
before World War I. Writer Louis Adamic came to America from
Slovenia in southeastern Europe in 1913
and described the night he and many other immigrants slept on bunk beds in a
huge hall. Lacking a warm blanket, the young man "shivered, sleepless, all
night, listening to snores and dreams in perhaps a dozen different languages".
The facility was so large that the dining room could seat 1,000
people.
By
the time it closed in 1954, twelve million immigrants had been processed by the
U.S. Bureau of Immigration. It is estimated that 10.5
million immigrants departed for points across the USA from the Central Railroad
of New Jersey Terminal, just across a narrow
strait. Others would have used one of the other terminals along the North River
(Hudson River) at that time. The peak year for
immigration at Ellis Island was 1907, with 1,004,756 immigrants processed. After
the Immigration Act of 1924 was passed, which greatly
restricted immigration and allowed processing at overseas embassies, the only
immigrants to pass through the station were displaced persons or war
refugees.
Generally, those immigrants who
were approved spent from two to five hours at Ellis Island. Arrivals were asked
twenty nine questions including name, occupation and the amount of money
carried. It was important to the American government that the new arrivals could
support themselves and have money to get started. The average the government
wanted the immigrants to have was between $18 and $25. Those with visible health
problems or diseases were sent home or held in the island's hospital facilities
for long periods of time. More than three thousand would-be immigrants died on
Ellis Island while being held in the hospital facilities. Some unskilled workers
were rejected because they were considered "likely to become a public charge".
About two percent were denied admission to the U.S. and sent back to their
countries of origin for reasons such as having a chronic contagious disease,
criminal background, or insanity. Ellis Island was sometimes known as "The
Island of Tears" or "Heartbreak Island" because of those 2% who were not
admitted after the long transatlantic voyage. The Kissing Post is a wooden
column outside the Registry Room, where new arrivals were greeted by their
relatives and friends, typically with tears, hugs and kisses.
During World War I, the German sabotage of the
Black Tom Wharf ammunition depot damaged
buildings on Ellis Island. The repairs included the current barrel-vaulted
ceiling of the Main Hall.
Detention and deportation center:
After 1924, Ellis Island became primarily a detention and deportation
processing center. During and immediately following World War II Ellis Island
was used to intern German merchant mariners and enemy aliens - American civilians or immigrants detained for fear of
spying, sabotage, etc. Some 7,000 Germans, Italians and Japanese would be
detained at Ellis Island. It was also a processing center for returning sick or
wounded U.S. soldiers and a Coast Guard training base. Ellis Island still
managed to process tens of thousands of immigrants a year during this time, but
many fewer than the hundreds of thousands a year who arrived before the war.
After the war immigration rapidly returned to earlier levels. Noted entertainers
who performed for detained aliens and for U.S. and allied servicemen at the
island included Rudy Vallee, Jimmy Durante, Bob Hope and Lionel
Hampton and orchestra. The Internal Security Act of 1950
barred members of communist or fascist organisations from immigrating to the
U.S. Ellis Island saw detention peak at 1,500, but by 1952, after changes to
immigration law and policies, only 30 detainees remained.
ALL IN ALL I ENJOYED THE VISIT
IT HAD NO MEANING FOR ME SO I WASN’T THAT
IMPRESSED
IS THAT WHY YOU FELL ASLEEP IN THE
DOCUMENTARY
OTHERS DID TOO, IT WASN’T JUST
ME
NO BUT YOU WERE THE ONLY ONE
SNORING...........