On
Jan. 1, 1892, Ellis Island finally opened its doors, marking a new era
of immigration. From 1892 to 1924, the island was the primary entryway
to America.
From
the moment its “golden doors” swung open in 1892, Ellis Island in New
York Harbor played a central role in the American immigration
experience. Comedian Bob Hope became an American there. So did actor
Cary Grant, composer Irving Berlin, and 12 million others. The island’s
federal immigration station served as the main portal into the United
States during the country’s busiest years of immigration, and for three
decades the words “Ellis Island” and “immigration” were inextricably
linked. Today, almost half of all Americans can trace their heritage
back to at least one person who passed through Ellis Island. While it no
longer operates as an immigration station, the facility remains an
important landmark—often dubbed “the Plymouth Rock of its day”—and still
draws millions of visitors annually, many of whom arrive hoping to
better understand their own family histories.
Before it transformed into a busy immigration station in the 1890s,
Ellis Island had a diverse history. A small land mass located just off
the New Jersey coast, the island formed from rising seas some 1,500
years ago. Native Americans called it “Kioshk” (meaning Gull Island) and
used it to hunt, fish, and gather oysters. American colonists
eventually did the same, referring to it as Oyster Island and taking day
trips there to dig for oysters and admire the view of New York’s
bustling harbor.
Samuel Ellis became the island’s private owner (and eventual
namesake) in the 1780s, and in 1808, as America readied for war with
Great Britain, the state of New York purchased the island and gave
ownership to the federal government. A fort and other fortifications
were constructed, but no military action ever occurred there. Instead,
after the war, the island became a munitions dump and depository for
surplus gunpowder. Many New Jersey and New York residents worried about
the possibility of a huge powder explosion, and after their repeated
complaints and great urging, Congress adopted legislation in 1890 to
remove the excess munitions from Ellis Island. The same bill also
allocated $75,000 to “improve Ellis Island for immigration purposes.”
A view of Ellis Island, ca. 1895. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images).
By that time the number of immigrants seeking entry to America had
begun to swell, beginning the largest period of mass migrations in
history. Until then, individual states had been charged with regulating
immigration into the United States, and from 1855 to 1890, Castle Garden
in the Battery served as New York’s immigration station. But as the
number of immigrants continued to balloon, some Americans expressed
concerns about the “desirability” of their new countrymen. They urged
the government to reconsider its open-door policies.
Under the Immigration Act of 1891, the federal government took
control of who was entering the country. Officials called for the
construction of a new federally operated immigration station on Ellis
Island, and on Jan. 1, 1892, the new Georgia-pine facility opened its
doors, marking a new era of immigration. (The building burned down just
five years later, only to be quickly rebuilt of fireproof brick and
limestone.)
On the morning of Jan. 1, 1892, a rosy-cheeked Irish girl celebrated
her 15th birthday by making history. Fresh off a 12-day boat ride across
the Atlantic Ocean, Annie Moore became the first immigrant to set foot
on Ellis Island and pass through its new immigration center. She and her
two younger brothers had made the long trip in steerage on board the SS
Nevada steamship to join their parents, who had already immigrated to
New York. According to a Jan. 2, 1892, article in
The New York Times:
“When the little voyager had been registered [Ellis Island
Commissioner] Col. Weber presented her with a ten-dollar gold piece and
made a short address of congratulation and welcome. It was the first
United States coin [Moore] had ever seen and the largest sum of money
she had ever possessed. She says she will never part with it, but will
always keep it as a pleasant memento of the occasion.”
Sunny as the picture appears, for Moore and the 12 million other
immigrants who became American citizens on Ellis Island between 1892 and
1954, the arrival and inspection processes were often governed by fear,
chaos, and confusion. As first- and second-class cabin passengers
breezed through customs at the Hudson River piers and set off to begin
their new lives, steerage passengers—working-class immigrants who were
often in poor health—were hustled onto ferries at the port and whisked
down the Hudson straight to Ellis Island for processing. An English
immigrant once said of the shuffle: “We were put on a barge, jammed in
so tight that I couldn’t turn ’round, there were so many of us, you see,
and the stench was terrible.”
Immigrants
wait in long crowded lines awaiting their medical examinations before
being granted access in America. Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Before their voyages to the United States, would-be immigrants
submitted their information to the ships’ manifest logs. The paperwork
included 29 questions meant to weed out those who might become “burdens”
after they arrived in America. Once on the island, the inspection
process took three to five hours, and included both legal and medical
examinations. The latter began almost immediately. Doctors were
stationed atop the stairwells to observe arriving immigrants for any
obvious signs of medical issues, and inside the registry room, other
physicians quickly checked new arrivals for more than 60 diseases and
disabilities that would disqualify them from entering the country. These
so-called “six-second physicals” included a painful check for
trachoma—a contagious eye condition—in which the examiner used a
buttonhook to turn an immigrant’s eyelid inside out.
Following their medical examinations, immigrants were grouped in the
main building’s registry room, where they waited to present their papers
and answer inspectors’ questions about age, marital status, financial
situation, and employment prospects in an effort to cross-examine the
information they’d provided at embarkation. It was a large room, crowded
and noisy. As a Russian Jewish immigrant later recalled: “To me, it was
like the House of Babel. Because there were so many languages and so
many people and everybody huddled together. And it was so full of fear.”
While most passengers passed through the inspections and were set
free to begin their new lives in America, the process wasn’t as smooth
for some. About 20 percent of immigrants were detained on Ellis Island
for days or weeks before being allowed to enter the country. Many of
those detainments were due to illness, in which case the immigrant was
admitted to the cramped Ellis Island hospital for observation and
treatment. Immigrants who had no money or seemed “likely to become a
public charge” were required to appear before a Board of Special Inquiry
to plead their cases.
Photo by Fotosearch/Getty Images.
Then there was the worst-case scenario: Never seeing more of America
than Ellis Island. Two percent of arriving immigrants were barred from
entering the United States—which amounted to about 250,000 people during
the peak years of immigration. For most travelers, this turn of events
resulted in major distress—many had sold everything they owned to pay
for their journeys to the United States and would thus be returning to
their homelands worse off than before they left.
In 1907, the peak year for immigration, Ellis Island processed
approximately 1.25 million new Americans. Masons and carpenters raced to
enlarge the existing facilities and to build new ones, unaware that
only a few short years later, as the country entered World War I,
immigration numbers would plummet.
As the First World War raged in Europe, instead of welcoming new
countrymen, the United States brought suspected enemy aliens to Ellis
Island under custody. Unable to admit or deport anyone, the island soon
filled up with these immigrants-in-limbo, and when the United States
entered the war in 1917, still more aliens, immigrants, and detainees
were sent there. More than 1,800 merchant seamen taken from German ships
at various U.S. ports were also housed in a temporary detention center
on Ellis Island, joined by alleged spies, anarchists, radicals, and
aliens accused of sympathizing with the enemy. By the end of the war,
most of them had been shipped to detention camps across the country, but
during the “Red Scare” that followed, hundreds of suspected “alien
radicals” were again interned on the island and later deported.
Although Ellis Island reopened as an immigration station in
1920—processing 225,206 people that year—it soon became obvious that the
facility’s days as a portal into America were dwindling. For the
previous two decades, “restrictionists” had been pushing for more
stringent immigration laws. In the midst of World War I, they gained
modest ground when Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1917,
prohibiting 33 categories of “undesirables” (including illiterates) from
entering the country. When that still didn’t quell the tide of
immigration, another law was added: The First Quota Act of 1921, which
restricted immigration to 350,000 admissions a year. The National
Origins Act followed in 1924, lowering the immigration cap to 150,000
admissions annually and allowing prospective immigrants to apply for
visas in their countries of origin, rendering Ellis Island’s
already-sparse immigration duties obsolete.
Over the next few decades, save for a brief guest spot in World War
II, the island was used primarily to detain immigrants with paperwork
issues and to deport illegal aliens. To recoup the expense of
maintaining the buildings, the Immigration and Naturalization Service
moved its New York operations from Ellis Island to Manhattan, and in
1954 the Justice Department announced it would close all seaport
detention centers, including Ellis Island. By then, only one detainee
remained on the island—a Norwegian merchant seaman named Arne Peterssen
who had overstayed his shore leave. He was released in November 1954,
and Ellis Island’s once-“golden” doors officially swung shut.
Part
of a group of illegal aliens wave goodbye to the Statue of Liberty as
they get deported, ca. 1952. Photo by Buyenlarge/Getty Images.
The island’s abandoned buildings deteriorated quickly. In the decade
after it closed, items that signified the immigration station’s former
importance became covered in dust. Roofs leaked. Scavengers snatched up
copper and fans and typewriters. It was a lonely time for the
once-bustling Ellis Island.
A deteriorating corridor of Ellis Island immigration center, ca. 1955. Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Then, in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a proclamation that
made Ellis Island part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument. From
1976 to 1984, the island reopened to the public on a limited basis, and
in 1984, a $160 million historic renovation project—the largest in U.S.
history—began. The main building was carefully cleaned up. Some parts
were restored to look as they did during the peak immigration years, and
other areas were transformed into exhibition galleries and theaters.
The Ellis Island Immigration Museum opened to the public on Sept. 10,
1990, offering new generations a glimpse into the immigrant experience
through photographs, mementos, documents, and oral histories. Today, the
museum draws almost 2 million visitors annually, and four other
buildings on the island have been restored.
In 2001, the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation launched the
American Family Immigration History Center, allowing visitors to scour
more than 25 million Port of New York passenger arrival records and 900
ship photographs for markers of their own family histories. For those
who can’t make the trip to New York, the Foundation also offers the same
search options on its website. Both virtual and in-person visitors can
enter a person’s first and last names and approximate year of birth,
then view, store, or even purchase any matching passenger records or
ships’ manifest logs and images.
Getty Images
