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An island of Upper New York Bay southwest of Manhattan. It was the chief immigration station of the United States from 1892 to 1943. Officially closed in 1954, the site was designated a National Monument in 1965, and the main building was opened to the public as a museum in 1990.
For more information on Ellis Island, visit Britannica.com.
From 1892 to 1954, Ellis Island was a gateway for more than 12 million immigrants seeking access to the United States' way of life. Because of its historical significance and proximity to the statue, the site was declared part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument in 1965, but the land and its buildings remained in decay and disrepair. After a $1 million cleanup grant by the federal government for the bicentennial in 1976, $165 million was raised in private donations to restore the main building, including the huge Great Hall, which was opened as a museum for visitors in 1990.
The federal government established its first immigration center at the site in 1890, using ballast from incoming ships as landfill to double the island in size. In 1892, Annie Moore from Ireland, age 15, was the first immigrant recorded to come through Ellis Island proper (for a few years before this, immigrants were processed at Castle Garden, still considered part of the Ellis Island experience today). In 1897, the original wooden buildings burned to the ground. While some records were lost, none of the ship manifests were lost as they were stored elsewhere. The main building that exists today was opened in 1900, and 389,000 immigrants were processed through it in the first year alone. The record number in one day occurred in 1907, with 11,747. By 1917, Congress required all immigrants over age 16 be literate, and quotas began a few years later.
An estimated forty percent, or over 100 million Americans, can trace their ancestry through at least one man, woman, or child who entered the country through Ellis Island. During the peak years, thousands of immigrants arrived each day. Each immigrant was checked for diseases, disabilities, and legal problems, and each name was recorded. In the confusion and with so many languages entering the country, many of the clerks wrote names based on English phonetic spellings or quick approximations, and many of these names have stayed with families to this day. People in steerage class on the crossing steam-ships were asked to board ferries that brought them to the Ellis Island facilities. There, they stood for hours in long lines reaching up the long stairs to the Great Hall, complete with children and all the belongings they had brought with them, awaiting inspection and passage through Ellis Island to the trains or boats that would take them to New York City or upstate New York, or on to other areas of the country. About two percent, or 250,000, did not pass the inspections and were turned around to go back to their countries of origin.
The open-door policy of immigration did not always exist at Ellis Island. In the 1920s, quotas were enacted; later, immigration processing was moved overseas. During World War II, the facility was used to house enemy aliens. Finally, the entryway was closed in 1954 and offered for sale as surplus government property, until the National Park Service took it over during the Johnson administration in 1965.
Today, thousands of visitors include a trip to Ellis Island with their visit to the Statue of Liberty. Ferries bring them to the hallowed island, much as they did years ago with their ancestors. A passenger database helps them locate their ancestors' records.
—Connie Ann Kirk
Island in the harbor of New York City, southwest of Manhattan.
An island in the harbor of New York City. The chief immigration station of the United States was on Ellis Island from 1892 to 1943, a time when millions of people, especially from Europe, came to the United States.
| Ellis Island National Monument | |
|---|---|
| IUCN Category III (Natural Monument) | |
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| Location | New Jersey & New York, USA |
| Nearest city | Jersey City, NJ |
| Coordinates | |
| Area | 58.38 acres (0.24 km²) (includes Statue of Liberty NM) |
| Established | May 11, 1965 (as a monument) |
| Total visitation | 3,618,053 (includes Statue of Liberty NM) (in 2004) |
| Governing body | National Park Service |
Ellis Island, at the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbor, was at one time the main entry facility for immigrants entering the United States from January 1, 1892 until November 12, 1954. It is wholly in the possession of the Federal government as a part of Statue of Liberty National Monument, however, and is under the jurisdiction of the US National Park Service. It currently sits in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Ellis Island was the subject of a border dispute between New York State and New Jersey (see below). According to the United States Census Bureau, the island, which was largely artificially created through the
landfill process, has an official land area of 129,619 square meters, or 32
acres, more than 83 percent of which lies in the city of Jersey City. The natural portion of the
island, lying in
Ellis Island acquired its name from Samuel Ellis, a colonial New Yorker, possibly from Wales.
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; also, two lots of ground, one at the lower end of Queen street, joining Luke’s wharf, the other in Greenwich street, between Petition and Dey streets, and a parcel of spars for masts, yards, brooms, bowsprits, & c. and a parcel of timber fit for pumps and buildings of docks; and a few barrels of excellent shad and herrings, and others of an inferior quality fit for shipping; and a few thousand of red herring of his own curing, that he will warrant to keep good in carrying to any part of the world, and a quantity of twine which he sell very low, which is the best sort of twine, for tyke nets. Also a large Pleasure Sleigh, almost new.—Samuel Ellis advertizing in Loudon’s New York-Packet, 1778
The Ellis Island Immigrant Station was designed by architects Edward Lippincott Tilton and William Boring. They received a gold medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition for the building's design.
The federal immigration station opened on January 1, 1892 and was closed in November 12, 1954, but not before 12 million immigrants, were inspected there by the US Bureau of Immigration (Immigration and Naturalization Service). There are unsubstantiated estimates for immigrants processed there as high as 20 million. In the 35 years before Ellis Island opened, over 8 million immigrants had been processed locally by New York State officials at Castle Garden Immigration Depot in Manhattan.
Ellis Island was one of 30 processing stations opened by the federal government. It was the major processing station for third class/steerage immigrants entering the United States in 1892; it processed 70% of all immigrants at the time.
Wealthy immigrants that traveled first class and second class would get automatic entry into the United States. Those who did not travel first or second class had to pass a six second physical examination. Those with visible health problems or diseases were sent home or held in the island's hospital facilities for long periods of time. Then they were asked 29 questions including name, occupation, and the amount of money they carried with them. Generally those immigrants who were approved spent from three to five hours at Ellis Island. However more than three thousand would-be immigrants died on Ellis Island while being held in the hospital facilities. Some unskilled workers and immigrants were rejected outright because they were considered "likely to become a public charge." About 2 percent were denied admission to the U.S. and sent back to their countries of origin for reasons such as chronic contagious disease, criminal background, or insanity.[1]
Writer Louis Adamic came to America from Slovenia in southeastern Europe in 1913. Adamic described the night he spent on Ellis Island. 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".
After the 1924 "Quota Laws" placed restrictions on immigration, the United States government began processing immigrants in its embassies and consulates of the emigrant country. From 1924 until its closure Ellis Island was used only sporadically for immigration. It would be mostly used for detainees and refugees. Italians were detained, Japanese were interned, but the major group to be detained were German Americans during World War II falsely accused of being Nazis. As with all historic areas administered by the National Park Service, Ellis Island, along with Statue of Liberty, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966.
Today Ellis Island houses a museum reachable by ferry from Liberty State Park in Jersey City, New Jersey and from the southern tip of Manhattan in New York City. The Statue of Liberty, sometimes thought to be on Ellis Island because of its symbolism as a welcome to immigrants, is actually on nearby Liberty Island, which is about 1/2 mile to the South.
Ellis island was also known as "The Island of Tears" or "Heartbreak Island"[2] because of the 2% who were not admitted after the long transatlantic voyage.
The following is a list of the station's commissioners:
Other notable officials at Ellis Island included Edward F. McSweeney (assistant commissioner), Joseph Murray (assistant commissioner), Dr. George Stoner (chief surgeon), Augustus Frederick Sherman (chief clerk), Dr. Victor Heiser (surgeon), Thomas W. Salmon (surgeon), Howard Knox (surgeon), Peter Mikolainis (interpreter), Maud Mosher (matron), Fiorello H. LaGuardia (interpreter), and Philip Cowen (immigrant inspector).
Prominent amongst the missionaries and immigrant aid workers were Rev. Michael J. Henry and Rev. Anthony J. Grogan (Irish Catholics), Rev. Gaspare Moretto (Italian Catholic), Alma E. Mathews (Methodist), Rev. Georg Doring (German Lutheran), Rev. Reuben Breed (Episcopalian), Michael Lodsin (Baptist), Brigadier Thomas Johnson (Salvation Army), Ludmila K. Foxlee (YWCA), Athena Marmaroff (Women's Christian Temperance Union), Alexander Harkavy (HIAS), Cecilia Greenstone and Cecilia Razovsky (National Council of Jewish Women).
Noted entertainers that performed for detained aliens and US and allied servicemen at the island included Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Enrico Caruso, Rudy Vallee, Jimmy Durante, Bob Hope, and Lionel Hampton and his orchestra.
Ellis Island would see a new immigrant entering the United States. More than 20 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954. The first immigrant to pass through Ellis Island was Annie Moore, a 15-year-old girl from County Cork, Ireland, on January 1, 1892. She and her two brothers were coming to America to meet their parents, who had moved to New York two years prior. She received a greeting from officials and a $10.00 gold piece.[3] The last person to pass through Ellis Island was a Norwegian merchant seaman by the name of Arne Peterssen in 1954. After 1924 when the National Origins Act was passed, the only immigrants to pass through there were displaced persons or war refugees.[4] Today, over 100 million Americans can trace their ancestry to the immigrants who first arrived in America through the island before dispersing to points all over the country.
An inaccurate myth persists that government officials on Ellis Island compelled immigrants to take new names against their wishes. In fact, no historical records bear this out. Federal immigration inspectors were under strict bureaucratic supervision and were more interested in preventing inadmissible aliens from entering the country (which they were held accountable for) rather than assisting them in trivial personal matters such as altering their names. In addition, the inspectors used the passenger lists given them by the steamship companies to process each foreigner. These were the sole immigration records for entering the country and were prepared not by the U.S. Bureau of Immigration but by steamship companies such as the Cunard Line, the White Star Line, the North German Lloyd Line, the Hamburg-Amerika Line, the Italian Steam Navigation Company, the Red Star Line, the Holland America Line, the Austro-American Line, and so forth.[5]
Many immigrants were tested for mental problems, physical problems and other illnesses. Those who were wealthy did not have to take these exams.
The symbols below were chalked on the clothing of potentially sick immigrants following the six-second medical examination. The doctors would look at them as they climbed the stairs from the baggage area up to the Great Hall. Immigrants' behaviour would be studied for difficulties in getting up the staircase in any way. Some only entered the country by surreptitiously wiping them off or by turning their clothes inside out.[6]
Ellis Island immigrants attaining success in America include Bob Hope, Irving Berlin, Knute Rockne, Ben Shahn, Arshile Gorky, Pola Negri, Anna Q. Nilsson, Claudette Colbert, Chef Boyardee (Ettore Boiardi), Erich von Stroheim, Felix Frankfurter, Father Flanagan, Joseph Stella, Arthur Tracy, Jule Styne, Pauline Newman, Irene Bordoni, Charles Atlas, Isaac Asimov, the Trapp Family Singers, Ezio Pinza, Ludwig Bemelmans, John Kluge, Hubert Fauntleroy Julian, Anzia Yezierska, Douglas Fraser, Sig Ruman, Michael Romanoff, James Reston, Bela Lugosi, Charles Chaplin, Stan Laurel, Arthur Murray, and Max Factor.[citation needed]
The main building now houses a museum in addition to being a historic site. It is legally in New York state, while the southern part of the island, which holds the unrestored infirmary and hospital buildings, is legally part of New Jersey.
There is a bridge between Ellis Island with Liberty State Park in Jersey City. It was built during the restoration of the island and heavy trucks went across it. In 1995 proposals were made to open it to pedestrians or to build a new bridge for pedestrians. They were defeated by two vested interests: the City of New York and the private operator of the only boat service to the island, the Circle Line. The supposedly inadequate bridge is still in use but closed to the public.[7]
There is a "Wall of Honor" outside of the main building. There is a myth that it lists all of the immigrants processed there. It is actually a wall giving people the opportunity to make a donation to honor any immigrant into the United States. As of 2006, the wall lists 700,000 names spanning 400 years of immigration.
Boston based architecture firm [[Finegold Alexander + Associates Inc]], together with a New York architectural firm, designed the restoration and adaptive use of the Beaux Arts Main Building, one of the most symbolically important structures in American history. A construction budget of $150 million was required for this significant restoration. The building was opened to the public on September 10, 1990.
Ellis Island attracted the imagination of filmmakers as long ago as the silent era. Early films featuring the station include Traffic in Souls (1913); The Yellow Passport (1916), starring Clara Kimbell Young; My Boy (1921), starring Jackie Coogan; Frank Capra's The Strong Man (1926), starring Harry Langdon; We Americans (1928), starring John Boles; Ellis Island (1936), starring Donald Cook; Gateway (1938), starring Don Ameche; and Exile Express (1939), which starred Anna Sten.
More recently, the island was a scene used in Hitch, a motion picture starring Will Smith. He and Eva Mendes take a jet ski to the island and explore the building. Also, the movie, "Golden Door," culminates with scenes on the island.
The IMAX 3D movie, Across the Sea of Time, about the New York immigrant experience, incorporates both modern footage and historical photographs of Ellis Island.
Ellis Island as a port of entry to the United States of America is described in detail in Mottel the Cantor's Son by Sholom Aleichem. It is also the place where Don Corleone was held as an immigrant boy in The Godfather Part II, where he was marked with an encircled X.
In the film X-Men, a UN summit held on the island is targeted by Magneto, who attempts to artificially change all the delegates present.
The opening scene of Brother From Another Planet takes place on Ellis Island.
A recent Italian movie called The Golden Door (produced by Martin Scorsese) takes place largely at Ellis Island.
On October 15, 1965, Ellis Island was proclaimed a part of Statue of Liberty National Monument, which is managed by the National Park Service. The island is on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. During the colonial period, however, New York had taken possession, and New Jersey had acquiesced in that action. In a compact between the two states, approved by U.S. Congress in 1834, New Jersey therefore agreed that New York would continue to have exclusive jurisdiction over the island.
Thereafter, however, the federal government expanded the island by landfill, so that it could accommodate the immigration station that opened in 1890 (and closed in November 1954). Landfilling continued until 1934. Nine-tenths of the current area is artificial island that did not exist at the time of the interstate compact.
New Jersey contended that the new extensions were part of New Jersey, since they were not part of the previous cession. New Jersey eventually filed suit to establish its jurisdiction, leading New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani dramatically to remark that his father, an Italian who immigrated through Ellis Island, never intended to go to New Jersey.[8]
The dispute eventually reached the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled in 1998 that New Jersey had jurisdiction over all portions of the island created after the original compact was approved. This caused several immediate problems: some buildings, for instance, fell into the territory of both states. New Jersey and New York soon agreed to share claims to the island. It remains wholly a Federal property, however, and none of this legal maneuvering has resulted in either state taking any fiscal or physical responsibility for the maintenance, preservation, or improvement of any of the historic properties that make the island so significant in the first place.
| Islands of New York City | |
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Barren Island · The Blauzes · Broad Channel Island · Chimney Sweeps · City Island ·
Coney Island · Ellis Island ·
Governors Island · Hart Island · High Island ·
Hoffman Island · Hunter Island · Isle of Meadow · Liberty Island ·
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| History Dictionary. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved. Read more |
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