Ellis Island, New York
ca. 1910
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Prior to 1890, the Federal Government contracted with individual states' port authorities to administer an evolving immigration policy. Officially, the Treasury Department maintained control over immigration, including deportations, enforcement of contract labor laws, and regulation of steamship companies' treatment of passengers.
Uneven enforcement and interpretation of existing regulations, exacerbated by increasing complaints regarding the treatment of immigrants, resulted in the establishment of a Federal Bureau of Immigration within the Treasury Department in 1891. The following year the Bureau opened Ellis Island Immigration Station in upper New York Bay.
Over the next 30 years, Ellis Island would become the main gateway to American Society for millions of immigrants. The initial wooden structure at Ellis Island burned to the ground only five years after it opened. The fire also destroyed ship manifests dating from 1855, taking with it a rich documentation of immigration history in the city of New York. The functions of the immigration station were temporarily relocated to a barge.
Over the next several years, scandalous stories of immigration agents swindling new arrivals, propositioning unaccompanied women, and extorting bribes from laborers reached Congress. When the majestic brick and limestone replacement building opened in 1900, reform was under way in the Bureau of Immigration.
Treatment of immigrants greatly improved in the impressive new quarters now administered by immigration officials who had become civil servants. The main building was designed to accommodate up to 5,000 people per day. Passengers disembarked from the ferries that took them from ships docked in Manhattan. They entered the turreted building under a cast-iron and glass canopy.
As the tide of immigrants rose, additional structures were built, including contagious disease wards, nurseries, and kitchens. With the passage of immigration restriction laws in the 1920s, the facilities were increasingly used to detain and deport "undesirables." In order to accommodate the necessary expansion of Ellis Island, architects enlarged the island with landfill from tunnels being dug to create New York's subway system. By 1934 the island had grown from its original 3.3 acres to 27.5 acres. A mere 20 years later, in 1954, the immigration station was abandoned. Its functions were assumed by New York's new port of entry for this nation of immigrants, Idlewild Airport, today called John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Text adapted from "Photographs of Ellis Island: The High Tide of Immigration" in the September 1994 National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) publication Social Education.
This primary source comes from the Records of the Public Health Service.
National Archives Identifier:
6235189Full Citation: Photograph 90-G-125-33; Ellis Island, New York; ca. 1910; Public Health Service Historical Photograph File, 1880 - 1943; Records of the Public Health Service, Record Group 90; National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD. [Online Version, https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/ellis-island-new-york, May 13, 2024]