Twelve million people came through this hall between 1892 and 1954. Around forty per cent of Americans have an ancestor who was processed in it.
Twelve million
Between 1892 and 1954 about twelve million people were processed through this building. At the peak, in 1907, it handled more than a million in a year and over 11,000 in a single day. Something in the region of forty per cent of the present American population has at least one ancestor who came through it.
The processing was fast and, for the great majority, uneventful — most people were through in three to five hours. Around two per cent were refused entry, usually on medical or financial grounds, which is why the island was called the Island of Tears despite the numbers being on the other side of the argument.
The story that names were changed at Ellis Island is a myth. Inspectors worked from the ship’s manifest, written at the port of departure; they had no authority to alter anything and frequently could not spell in the relevant alphabet either way.
The building
The Registry Room on the second floor is the reason to come. A vast hall with a vaulted Guastavino tile ceiling — the same firm that did the whispering gallery at Grand Central — where the queues snaked between iron railings and the medical inspectors watched people climb the stairs, looking for a limp or laboured breathing. That was the six-second physical examination: watching you come up the steps.
The museum occupies three floors and is one of the best-made history museums in the country. It covers the process, the ships, the ports of departure, the reasons people left, and — importantly — the American politics of immigration restriction that eventually closed the place.
The American Family Immigration History Center has the passenger records searchable on terminals. If you know a name and an approximate year you can find the manifest line, and people regularly do, on the spot.
The Wall of Honor outside carries names added by families who paid for the inscription.
The hospital
The south side of the island held a 750-bed hospital complex, unrestored and closed to the public except on the Hard Hat Tour — a guided walk through the abandoned wards, the autopsy room and the contagious disease wards, with an art installation by JR of photographs pasted onto the walls. It is a separate booked ticket and it is the most affecting thing on the island.
Getting there
Statue City Cruises from Battery Park in Manhattan or Liberty State Park in New Jersey. Same boat as Liberty Island, same ticket, and the loop goes Liberty then Ellis then back.
There is a cafeteria. Bring water in summer; the island is exposed.
More The Waterfront
Staten Island Ferry
Twenty-five minutes across New York Harbour past the Statue of Liberty, every half hour, around the clock, for nothing. The best free thing in the city.
Governors Island
An army base for two centuries, closed to the public until 2005, now 172 acres of car-free park eight minutes by ferry from Lower Manhattan.
The Battery
Twenty-five acres at the bottom of the island, named for the gun battery that stood here, and the departure point for every boat in the harbour.