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	Ellis Island
Location	Jersey City; New York City
Built	1892

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Ellis Island is an unihabited island in the Upper New York Bay that was from 1892 to 1954 a United States Immigration Station, owned by the United States federal government and operated under the juridisction of the National Park Service. The island and buildings on it are part of Statue of Liberty National Monument, Ellis Island and Liberty Island, a United States historic district that includes the national monument, and is an immigration memorial and museum.

Geography and Access

Ellis Island is located in the Upper New York Bay east of Liberty State Park and north of Liberty Island in Jersey City, New Jersey. According to the United States Census Bureau the island has an official land area of 129,619 square meters, or 32 acres, of which more than 83 percentwhich created through landfill. The original portion of the island is 21,458 square meters (5.3 acres) is bounded landfilled sections. Similiar to Liberty Island, the 5.3 acres are an exclave of New York State located in State of New Jersey.

While there is bridge that connects Ellis Island with Liberty State Park, public access is permitted only by ferry from either Communipaw Terminal in the park or from Castle Clinton in Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan, which also provide service to The Statue of Liberty. The bridge was built for materials and personnel during the restoration projects. In 1995 proposals were made either to open for general use or to build a new bridge for pedestrians. They were opposes by two vested interests, the City of New York and the private operator of ferry service at that time, the Circle Line. It is still in use but closed to the public.^[3] Since September 11, 2001, guarded by around-the-clock patrols of the United States Park Police Marine Patrol Unit.

Architecture and Restoration

The Ellis Island Immigrant Station was designed by architects Edward Lippincott Tilton and William Alciphron Boring. They received a gold medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition for the building's design. The architecture competition was the second under the Tarsney Act which had permitted private architects rather than government architects in the Office of the Supervising Architect to design federal buildings.^[4]

Boston based architecture firm Finegold Alexander + Associates Inc, together with the New York architectural firm Beyer Blinder Belle, 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. This money was raised by a grassroots campaign organized by the political fundraiser Wyatt A. Stewart.^[5] The building was opened to the public on September 10, 1990.^[6]

As part of the National Park Service's Centennial Initiative, the south side of the island will be the target of a project to restore the 28 buildings that have not yet been rehabilitated.^[7]

There is a "Wall of Honor" outside of the main building. A myth is 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. In 2008, the Museum's Library was officially named The Bob Hope Memorial Library in honor of one the station's most famous immigrants.

Oyster Island and Ellis Island

At the time of European colonialization of the Hudson River estuary in the 17th century, much of the west side Upper New York Bay contained large tidal flats which hosted vast oyster banks, a major source of food for Lenape population who lived there at the time. There were several islands which were not completely submerged at high tide amon them those later to be known as Liberty, Black Tom and Ellis.The latter was called Little Oyster Island,^[8] by the settlers to the New Netherland, the first European colony in the Mid-Atlantic states. The oyster beds would remain a major source of food for nearly three centuries.^[9] Landfilling after the turn of the century, particularly by Lehigh Valley Railroad and Central Railroad of New Jersey, eventually obliterated the beds, engulfed one island and brought the shoreline much closer to the others.

Ellis Island acquired its name from Samuel Ellis, a colonial New Yorker, possibly from Wales.

TO BE SOLD
It was to be sold by Samuel Ellis, no. 1, Greenwich Street, at the north river near the Jewish Market, That pleasant situated Island called Oyster Island, lying in New 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 advertising in London New York-Packet, 1778

Immigration station

Immigration

Film by Edison Studios showing immigrants disembarking from the steam ferryboat William Myers onto Ellis Island on July 9, 1903

Scenes at the Immigration Depot and a nearby dock on Ellis Island.

Shortly after the U.S. Civil War, some states started to pass their own immigration laws, which prompted the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in 1875 that immigration was a federal responsibility. The Immigration Act of 1891^{[citation needed]} established an Office of the Superintendent of Immigration within the Treasury Department. This office was responsible for admitting, rejecting, and processing all immigrants seeking admission to the United States and for implementing national immigration policy. 'Immigrant Inspectors', as they were called then, were stationed at major U.S. ports of entry collecting manifests of arriving passengers. Its largest station was located on Ellis Island in New York Harbor. In the 35 years before Ellis Island opened, over 8 million immigrants had been processed locally by officials at Castle Garden Immigration Depot (1855–1890) in Manhattan. The federal immigration station opened on January 1, 1892 and was closed on November 12, 1954, and approxiamately 12 million immigrants were inspected there by the US Bureau of Immigration (Immigration and Naturalization Service). It is estimated that more than 10 million passed through the Central Railroad of New Jersey Communipaw Terminal, ferried across a narrow straight from the island.^[10] 1907 was the peak year for immigration at Ellis Island with 1,004,756 immigrants processed. The all-time daily high also occurred this year on April 17 which saw a total of 11,747 immigrants arrive.^[11]The facility was so large that the dining room could seat 1,000 people.

The first immigrant to pass through Ellis Island was Annie Moore, a 15-year-old girl from 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 gold piece.^[12] 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.^[13] Today, over 100 million Americans - 1/3 of the population - can trace their ancestry to the immigrants who first arrived in America through the island before dispersing to points all over the country.

Writer Louis Adamic came to America from Slovenia in 1913. Describing the night he spent on Ellis Island when 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".

Detention and deportation

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. During the war, Ellis Island was used to intern German merchant mariners and enemy aliens as well as a processing center for returning sick and wounded U.S. soldiers. Ellis Island still managed to process tens of thousands of immigrants a year during this time, but much fewer than the hundreds of thousands a year who arrived before the war. After the war immigration rapidly returned to earlier levels.^[11]

Mass processing of immigrants at Ellis Island ended in 1924 after the Immigration Act of 1924 greatly restricted immigration and allowed processing at overseas embassies. After this time Ellis Island became primarily a detention and deportation processing center.^[11]

During and immediately following World War II, Ellis Island served as Coast Guard training base and as an internment camp for 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.^[11]

The Internal Security Act of 1950 barred members of Communist or Fascist organizations 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 were present.^[11] In November 1954, Ellis Island was closed and unsuccessful attempts to redevelop the site began until its landmark status was established.

Staff

The following is a list of the station's commissioners:

1890–1893 Colonel John B. Weber (Republican)
1893–1897 Dr. Joseph H. Senner (Democrat)
1897–1902 Thomas Fitchie (Republican)
1902–1905 William Williams (Republican)
1905–1909 Robert Watchorn (Republican)
1909–1913 William Williams (Republican) 2nd Term
1914–1919 Dr. Frederic C. Howe (Democrat)
1920–1921 Frederick A. Wallis (Democrat)
1921–1923 Robert E. Tod (Republican)
1923–1926 Henry C. Curran (Republican)
1926–1931 Benjamin M. Day (Republican)
1931–1934 Edward Corsi (Republican)
1934–1940 Rudolph Reimer (Democrat)
1940–1942 Byron H. Uhl
1942–1949 W. Frank Watkins
1949–1954 Edward J. Shaughnessy

Other notable officials at Ellis Island included Edward F. McSweeney (assistant commissioner), Joseph E. Murray (assistant commissioner), Dr. George W. Stoner (chief surgeon), Augustus Frederick Sherman (chief clerk), Dr. Victor Heiser (surgeon), Thomas W. Salmon (surgeon), Howard Knox (surgeon), Antonio Frabasilis (interpreter), Peter Mikolainis (interpreter), Maud Mosher (matron), Fiorello H. La Guardia (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 Catholic), Rev. Gaspare Moretto (Italian Catholic), Alma E. Mathews (Methodist), Rev. Georg Doring (German Lutheran), Rev. Joseph L'Etauche (Polish Catholic), Rev. Reuben Breed (Episcopal), Michael Lodsin (Baptist), Brigadier Thomas Johnson (Salvation Army), Ludmila K. Foxlee (YWCA), Athena Marmaroff (Woman'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.

Records

A 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 to 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 (which owned the Titanic), 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.^[14] The Americanization of many immigrant families' surnames was for the most part adopted by the family after the immigration process, or by the second or third generation of the family after some assimilation into American culture. However many last names were altered slightly due to the disparity between English and other languages in the pronunciation of certain letters of the alphabet.^[15]

Medical inspections

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 two 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 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.^[16] Ellis Island was sometimes known as "The Island of Tears" or "Heartbreak Island"^[17] because of those 2% who were not admitted after the long transatlantic voyage.

The United States Public Health Service operated an extensive medical service at the immigrant station called U.S. Marine Hospital Number 43; it was more widely known as the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital. It was the largest marine hospital in the nation. The station was staffed by uniformed military surgeons. They are best known for the role they played during line inspection, in which they employed unusual techniques such as the use of the buttonhook to examine aliens for signs of eye diseases (particularly, trachoma) and the use of a chalk mark code. 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' behavior would be studied for difficulties in getting up the staircase. Some only entered the country by surreptitiously wiping the chalk marks off or by turning their clothes inside out.^[18]

B – Back
C - Conjunctivitis
CT – Trachoma
E – Eyes
F – Face
FT – Feet
G – Goiter
H – Heart
K – Hernia
L – Lameness
N – Neck
P – Physical and Lungs
PG – Pregnancy
S – Senility
SC – Scalp (Favus)
SI – Special Inquiry
X – Suspected Mental defect
X (circled) – Definite signs of Mental defect

Notable Ellis Island immigrants

Ellis Island Medal of Honor

Federal jurisdiction and state sovereignty dispute

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 entirely 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 what was the territory of the island at that time.

Thereafter, however, the federal government expanded the island by landfill, so that it could accommodate the immigration station. Landfilling continued until 1934, so that 83% 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 to remark dramatically that his father, an Italian who immigrated through Ellis Island, never intended to go to New Jersey.^[19]

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 (effectively, more than 80% of the island's present land). This caused several immediate confusions: 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 these legal decisions do not result in either state taking any fiscal or physical responsibility for the maintenance, preservation, or improvement of any of the historic properties.

For New York State tax purposes it is assessed as Manhattan Block 1, Lot 201. Since 1998, it also has a tax number assigned by Jersey City.

In film

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.

The island was a scene used in the 2005 feature film romantic comedy, Hitch, starring Will Smith, in which his and Eva Mendes' characters take a jet ski to the island and explore the building.

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, a former immigrant who attempts to artificially mutate all the delegates present.

The opening scene of Brother From Another Planet takes place on Ellis Island.

The 2006 Italian movie The Golden Door, (directed by Emanuele Crialese) takes place largely at Ellis Island.

A documentary on the hospital at Ellis Island was created by Lorie Conway.

Notes

^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2009-03-13.
^ "National Monument Proclamations under the Antiquities Act". Cr.nps.gov. 2003-01-16. Retrieved 2009-08-01.
^ Setha Low, Dana Taplin, Suzanne Sheld (2005),Rethinking Urban Parks, University of Texas Press; chapter 4.
^ Lee, Antoinette J., Architects to the Nation: The Rise and Decline of the Supervising Architect's Office, Oxford University Press, USA. 2000-04-20. ISBN 0-19-512822-2
^ "World's Premier Election Assistance NGO Appoints Chief Operating Officer: Top Republican strategist and fundraiser Wyatt A. Stewart, III to join the International Foundation for Electoral Systems" (PDF) (Press release). International Foundation for Electoral Systems. 30 November 2009. Retrieved December 5, 2009.
^ National Park Service Ellis Island website
^ Bomar, Mary A. (2007). "Summary of Park Centennial Strategies" (PDF). National Park Service. Retrieved 2008-02-15. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ New York Times, March 1, 2006, accessed March 16, 2008
^ Kurlansky, Mark (2006). The Big Oyster. New York: Random House Trade paerpbacks. ISBN ISBN978-0-345-47639-5. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
^ NJCU: Jersey City Past and Present
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Ellis Island Timeline, Ellis Island Foundation, 2000.
^ Ellis Island Timeline. Retrieved April 21, 2007.
^ The Brown Quarterly, Volume 4, No. 1 (Fall 2000): Ellis Island/Immigration Issue
^ US Dept of Justice American Names / Declaring Independence, Marian L. Smith, INS Historian, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, last updated January 20, 2006, accessed May 22, 2007
^ "The Effect of Immigration on Surnames", FamilyEduction.com. Retrieved 2009-02-20. Excerpted from "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Genealogy" by Christine Rose and Kay Germain Ingalls, 2005.
^ National Park Service: Ellis Island, retrieved January 12, 2006.
^ Davis, Kenneth (2003), Don't Know Much About American History, HarperTrophy, ISBN 0-06-440836-1 ("Isle of Tears" or "Heartbreak Island," p. 123)
^ Ellis Island Chalk Marks. Retrieved April 21, 2007.
^ Sheahan, Matthew. "My Grandmother Is the Greatest", Knot Magazine, May 4, 2004.

References

Ellis Island: Blocks 9019 thru 9023, Block Group 9, Census Tract 47, Hudson County, NJ; and Block 1000, Block Group 1, Census Tract 1, New York County, NY; United States Census Bureau.
Report of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization under joint resolution of Senate and House of January 29, 1892, submitted by Mr. Stump. Ordered to be printed July 28, 1892. By United States Congress, House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization.
Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal Justice Denied, 1982 report;
Encyclopaedia Britannica Films, Inc (1946). Immigration (Documentary). Internet Archive. Event occurs at 10:22. Retrieved 2009-01-20. Archive film contains scenes of Ellis Island and New York City in the early 20th century.
Guggenheim, Charles (director) (1989). Island of Hope - Island of Tears (Documentary). National Park Service. Event occurs at 28:24. Retrieved 2009-01-20. From 1892–1954, Ellis Island was the port of entry for millions of European immigrants. Fascinating archival footage tells the moving story of families with dreams of opportunity, leaving their homes with what they could carry.