ELLIS ISLAND

New York City has been called the most successful immigrant society in history.  No doubt the first glimpse of Ellis Island by the European immigrants brought great happiness, hope for new beginnings, tears of joy, and a sense of relief to those escaping poverty and religious persecution as they entered New York Harbor at the end of a long journey across the Atlantic Ocean.  

Founded in 1832, Ellis Island was established by the Federal Immigration Act of 1890 as a screening center for the large number of Europeans who were immigrating to this country.  It has been a detention center for deportees, a hospital for injured U.S. servicemen and a Coast Guard station.  Outside, the Museum the American Wall of Honor lists the names of over 400,000 immigrants who entered there.  

From the years 1820 to 1920, 70 percent of the country’s immigrants came into the United States through New York port.  Immigration reached record levels of 1,004,756 people in 1907.  Until the latter part of the 1820s, the number of immigrants coming to America was less than 10,000 per year.  From 1820 on the number began to increase especially in the 1840s and 1850s when bad harvests in Great Britain and northern Europe forced many to move.  Over 3.5 million came during the years 1845 to 1860.  From 1890 to 1900 Italian, Austro-Hungarian and Russian immigrants made up more than half of all immigrants.  By 1917, the U.S. government offered classes in English, child care , hygiene, sewing, sports programs for men at Ellis Island.  

Many of the immigrants were peasants coming from agricultural societies who faced many chances and new challenges here according to author Oscar Handlin in The Uprooted The Epic Story of the Great Immigration that Made the American People.  

The name, Ellis Island, comes from the butcher, Samuel Ellis, who owned the island during the Revolutionary War.  Native Americans called it "Gull Island" after the birds that inhabited it.  To the Dutch it was “Little Oyster Island” due to the abundance of oysters found there.  In early New Amsterdam, young Dutch gentlemen would row their young lady friends over to Oyster Island for picnics.   

Not all immigrants were allowed to enter America.  For them, Ellis Island became the Isle of Tears.  A room at Ellis Island, known as "The Closing Door,” has a timeline showing the various barriers to certain immigrants that were established as early as the year 1875.  Entrance was denied to epileptics, the mentally ill, people with tuberculosis and other illnesses, prostitutes, anarchists and polygamists.  Approximately one out of every hundred were refused admission.  Some actually committed suicide there.   The island had a separate hospital and a  building for the disturbed and mentally ill.  Immigrant records from 1855 to 1897 were unfortunately lost in a fire on June 14, 1898.   What was once the Great Hall or Registry Room at Ellis Island is now the Ellis Island Immigrant Museum.  

Immigration for European countries was so great that by 1890 there were more Germans living in New York City than in Hamburg, Germany, more Irish here than in Dublin, more Jews than in Warsaw and more foreign-born persons living here than in any other city in the world.  Today's immigrant population is composed  largely of Puerto Ricans, Italians, Dominicans, West Indians and Chinese.  The most recent reports show an increase of immigrants from Mexico, the Philippines, India, China, and the Dominican Republic. 

In The Color of a Great City, written in 1923, author, Theodore Dreiser, credits immigrants to America with "adding rich, dark, colorful threads to the rug or tapestry which is New York."   More than ever before it's important to remember the contributions of immigrants to American history. 

Two of the above photos are from the art installations, "Unframed -- Ellis Island," done by French artist, JR, for the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital.  The artist, JR, used Ellis Island archival photos to create the exhibit.  Save Ellis Island is a restoration fund to restore Ellis Island Hospital.