Paul Seibert
Between 1892 and 1954, more than 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island hoping to start a new life in America. Situated between New York and New Jersey, the historic site was often the first piece of dry land weary travelers touched after a long journey across the Atlantic.….Story continues…
By: Sarah Kuta
Source: Smithsonian
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Critics:
The Army had unsuccessfully attempted to use Ellis Island “for the convalescence for immigrants” as early as 1847. Across New York Harbor, Castle Clinton had been used as an immigration station since 1855, processing more than eight million immigrants during that time. The individual states had their own varying immigration laws until 1875, but the federal government regarded Castle Clinton as having “varied charges of mismanagement, abuse of immigrants, and evasion of the laws”, and as such, wanted it to be completely replaced.
The federal government assumed control of immigration in early 1890 and commissioned a study to determine the best place for the new immigration station in New York Harbor. Among members of the United States Congress, there were disputes about whether to build the station on Ellis, Governors, or Liberty Islands. Initially, Liberty Island was selected as the site for the immigration station, but due to opposition for immigration stations on both Liberty and Governors Islands, the committee eventually decided to build the station on Ellis Island.
Since Castle Clinton’s lease was about to expire, Congress approved a bill to build an immigration station on Ellis Island. On April 11, 1890, the federal government ordered the magazine at Ellis Island be torn down to make way for the U.S.’s first federal immigration station at the site. The Department of the Treasury, which was in charge of constructing federal buildings in the U.S.,officially took control of the island that May 24.
Congress initially allotted $75,000 (equivalent to $2,543,000 in 2023) to construct the station and later doubled that appropriation. While the building was under construction, the Barge Office at the Battery was used for immigrant processing.During construction, most of the old Battery Gibson buildings.The main structure was a two-story structure of Georgia Pin which was described in Harper’s Weekly as “a latterday watering place hotel” measuring 400 by 150 ft (122 by 46 m).Its outbuildings included a hospital, detention building, laundry building, and utility plant that were all made of wood.
Some of the former stone magazine structures were reused for utilities and offices. Additionally, a ferry slip with breakwater was built to the south of Ellis Island. Following further expansion, the island measured 11 acres (4.5 ha) by the end of 1892. The station opened on January 1, 1892, and its first immigrant was Annie Moore, a 17-year-old girl from Cork, Ireland, who was traveling with her two brothers to meet their parents in the U.S. On the first day, almost 700 immigrants passed over the docks.
Over the next year, over 400,000 immigrants were processed at the station. The processing procedure included a series of medical and mental inspection lines, and through this process, some 1% of potential immigrants were deported. Additional building improvements took place throughout the mid-1890s, and Ellis Island was expanded to 14 acres (5.7 ha) by 1896. The last improvements, which entailed the installation of underwater telephone and telegraph cables to Governors Island, were completed in early June 1897.
On June 15, 1897, the wooden structures on Ellis Island were razed in a fire of unknown origin. While there were no casualties, the wooden buildings had completely burned down after two hours, and all immigration records from 1855 had been destroyed.Over five years of operation, the station had processed 1.5 million immigrants.
Following the fire, passenger arrivals were again processed at the Barge Office, which was soon unable to handle the large volume of immigrants. Within three days of the fire, the federal government made plans to build a new, fireproof immigration station.Legislation to rebuild the station was approved on June 30, 1897, and appropriations were made in mid-July. By September, the Treasury’s Supervising Architect, James Knox Taylor, opened an architecture competition to rebuild the immigration station.
The competition was the second to be conducted under the Tarsney Act of 1893, which had permitted private architects to design federal buildings, rather than government architects in the Supervising Architect’s office. The contest rules specified that a “main building with annexes” and a “hospital building”, both made of fireproof materials, should be part of each nomination. Furthermore, the buildings had to be able to host a daily average of 1,000 and maximum of 4,000 immigrants.
Several prominent architectural firms filed proposals, and by December, it was announced that Edward Lippincott Tilton and William A. Boring had won the competition.Tilton and Boring’s plan called for four new structures: a main building in the French Renaissance style, as well as the kitchen/laundry building, powerhouse, and the main hospital building. The plan also included the creation of a new island called island 2, upon which the hospital would be built, south of the existing island (now Ellis Island’s north side).
A construction contract was awarded to the R. H. Hood Company in August 1898, with the expectation that construction would be completed within a year, but the project encountered delays because of various obstacles and disagreements between the federal government and the Hood Company. A separate contract to build the 3.33-acre (1.35 ha) island 2 had to be approved by the War Department because it was in New Jersey’s waters; that contract was completed in December 1898.The construction costs ultimately totaled $1.5 million.
The new immigration station opened on December 17, 1900, without ceremony. On that day, 2,251 immigrants were processed. Almost immediately, additional projects commenced to improve the main structure, including an entrance canopy, baggage conveyor, and railroad ticket office. The kitchen/laundry and powerhouse started construction in May 1900 and were completed by the end of 1901.A ferry house was also built between islands 1 and 2 c. 1901.
The hospital, originally slated to be opened in 1899, was not completed until November 1901, mainly due to various funding delays and construction disputes. The facilities proved barely able to handle the flood of immigrants that arrived, and as early as 1903, immigrants had to remain in their transatlantic boats for several days due to inspection backlogs.Several wooden buildings were erected by 1903, including waiting rooms and a 700-bed barracks,and by 1904, over a million dollars’ worth of improvements were proposed.
The hospital was expanded from 125 to 250 beds in February 1907, and a new psychopathic ward debuted in November of the same year. Also constructed was an administration building adjacent to the hospital. Immigration commissioner William Williams made substantial changes to Ellis Island’s operations, and during his tenure from 1902 to 1905 and 1909–1913, Ellis Island processed its peak number of immigrants.
Williams also made changes to the island’s appearance, adding plants and grading paths upon the once-barren landscape of Ellis Island.Under Williams’s supervision, a 4.75-acre (1.92 ha) third island was built to accommodate a proposed contagious-diseases ward, separated from existing facilities by 200 ft (61 m) of water. Island 3, as it was called, was located to the south of island 2 and separated from that island by a now-infilled ferry basin.
The government bought the underwater area for island 3 from New Jersey in 1904,and a contract was awarded in April 1905. The islands were all connected via a cribwalk on their western sides (later covered with wood canopy), giving Ellis Island an overall “E”-shape. Upon the completion of island 3 in 1906, Ellis Island covered 20.25 acres (8.19 ha). A baggage and dormitory building was completed c. 1908–1909,and the main hospital was expanded in 1909.
Alterations were made to the registry building and dormitories as well, but even this was insufficient to accommodate the high volume of immigrants. In 1911, Williams alleged that Congress had allocated too little for improvements to Ellis Island,even though the improvement budget that year was $868,000. Additional improvements and routine maintenance work were completed in the early 1910s.A greenhouse was built in 1910, and the contagious-diseases ward on island 3 opened the following June.
In addition, the incinerator was replaced in 1911,and a recreation center operated by the American Red Cross was also built on island 2 by 1915.These facilities generally followed the design set by Tilton and Boring.When the Black Tom explosion occurred on Black Tom Island in 1916, the complex suffered moderate damage; though all immigrants were evacuated safely, the main building’s roof collapsed, and windows were broken.
The main building’s roof was replaced with a Guastavino-tiled arched ceiling by 1918. The immigration station was temporarily closed during World War I in 1917–1919, during which the facilities were used as a jail for suspected enemy combatants, and later as a treatment center for wounded American soldiers. Immigration inspections were conducted aboard ships or at docks.During the war, immigration processing at Ellis Island declined by 97%, from 878,000 immigrants per year in 1914 to 26,000 per year in 1919.
Ellis Island’s immigration station was reopened in 1920, and processing had rebounded to 560,000 immigrants per year by 1921.[19][151] There were still ample complaints about the inadequate condition of Ellis Island’s facilities. However, despite a request for $5.6 million in appropriations in 1921, aid was slow to materialize, and initial improvement work was restricted to smaller projects such as the infilling of the basin between islands 2 and 3.
Other improvements included rearranging features such as staircases to improve pedestrian flow. These projects were supported by president Calvin Coolidge, who in 1924 requested that Congress approve $300,000 in appropriations for the island. The allocations were not received until the late 1920s.
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