Ellis Island
Ellis Island is an island in New York Harbor, within the U.S. states of New Jersey and New York. Owned by the U.S. government, Ellis Island was once the busiest immigrant inspection and processing station in the United States. From 1892 to 1954, nearly 12 million immigrants arriving at the Port of New York and New Jersey were processed there; as many as two-fifths of Americans may be descended from these immigrants. It has been part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument since 1965 and is accessible to the public only by ferry. The north side of the island is a national museum of immigration, while the south side of the island, including the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital, is open to the public through guided tours.
The name derives from Samuel Ellis, a Welshman who bought the island in 1774. In the 19th century, Ellis Island was the site of Fort Gibson and later became a naval magazine. The first inspection station opened in 1892 and was destroyed by fire in 1897. The second station opened in 1900 and housed facilities for medical quarantines and processing immigrants. After 1924, Ellis Island was used primarily as a detention center for migrants. During both World War I and World War II, its facilities were also used by the U.S. military to detain prisoners of war. After the immigration station's closure, the buildings languished for several years until they were partially reopened in 1976. The main building and adjacent structures were completely renovated into a museum in 1990.
The island was expanded by land reclamation between the late 1890s and the 1930s and, at one point, consisted of three islands numbered 1, 2, and 3. Jurisdictional disputes between the states of New Jersey and New York persisted until the 1998 U.S. Supreme Court ruling New Jersey v. New York. The Supreme Court ruled that, while most of the island is in New Jersey, the natural portion of the island is an exclave of New York. The northern half of Ellis Island comprises the former Island 1 and includes the main building, several ancillary structures, and the Wall of Honor. The hospital structures on the island's southern half occupy the former sites of islands 2 and 3, and there is a ferry building between Ellis Island's northern and southern halves. Historically, immigrants were subjected to medical and primary inspections, and they could be detained or deported. The island is commemorated through the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, and it has received several federal, state, and municipal landmark designations.
Geography and access
Ellis Island is in New York Harbor, east of Liberty State Park and north of Liberty Island. While most of the island is in Jersey City, New Jersey, a small section is an exclave of New York City. The island has a land area of, much of which is from land reclamation. The natural island and contiguous areas comprise within New York, and are located on the northern portion of the present-day island. The artificial land is part of New Jersey. The island has been owned and administered by the federal government of the United States since 1808 and operated by the National Park Service since 1965.Land expansion
Initially, much of the Upper New York Bay's western shore consisted of large tidal flats with vast oyster beds, which were a major source of food for the Lenape. Ellis Island was one of three "Oyster Islands," the other two being Liberty Island and the now-subsumed Black Tom Island. In the late 19th century, the federal government began expanding the island by land reclamation to accommodate its immigration station, and the expansions continued until 1934.The National Park Service cites the fill as supposedly having been acquired from the ballast of ships, as well as material excavated from the first line of the New York City Subway; however, The New York Times writes that there is no evidence of subway fill being transported to the island. It also may have come from the railyards of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and the Central Railroad of New Jersey. It eventually obliterated the oyster beds, engulfed one of the Oyster Islands, and brought the shoreline much closer to the others.
The current island is shaped like a "C", with two landmasses of equal size on the northeastern and southwestern sides, separated by what was formerly a ferry pier. It was originally three separate islands. The current north side, formerly called island 1, contains the original island and the fill around it. The current south side was composed of island 2, created in 1899, and island 3, created in 1906. Two eastward-facing ferry docks separated the three numbered landmasses.
The fill was retained with a system of wood piles and cribbing, and later encased with more than 7,700 linear feet of concrete and granite sea wall. It was placed atop either wood piles, cribbing, or submerged bags of concrete. In the 1920s, the second ferry basin between islands 2 and 3 was infilled to create the great lawn, forming the current south side of Ellis Island. As part of the project, a concrete and granite seawall was built to connect the tip of these landmasses.
State sovereignty dispute
The circumstances which led to an exclave of New York being located within New Jersey began in the colonial era, after the British takeover of New Netherland in 1664. A clause in the colonial land grant outlined the territory that the proprietors of New Jersey would receive as being "westward of Long Island, and Manhitas Island and bounded on the east part by the main sea, and part by Hudson's river."As early as 1804, attempts were made to resolve the status of the state line. The government of New York City claimed the right to regulate trade on all waters. This was contested in Gibbons v. Ogden, which decided that the regulation of interstate commerce fell under the authority of the federal government, thus influencing competition in the newly developing steam ferry service in New York Harbor. In 1830, New Jersey planned to bring suit to clarify the border, but the case was never heard. The matter was resolved with a compact between the states, ratified by U.S. Congress in 1834. This set the boundary line at the middle of the Hudson River and New York Harbor; however, New York was guaranteed "exclusive jurisdiction of and over all the waters of Hudson River lying west of Manhattan and to the south of the mouth of Spuytenduyvil Creek; and of and over the lands covered by the said waters, to the low-water mark on the New Jersey shore." This was later confirmed in other cases by the U.S. Supreme Court.
New Jersey contended that the artificial portions of the island were part of New Jersey, since they were outside New York's border. In 1956, after the closure of the U.S. immigration station two years prior, the Mayor of Jersey City Bernard J. Berry commandeered a U.S. Coast Guard cutter and led a contingent of New Jersey officials on an expedition to claim the island.
Jurisdictional disputes reemerged in the 1980s with the renovation of Ellis Island, and then again in the 1990s with the proposed redevelopment of the south side. New Jersey sued in 1997. The lawsuit was escalated to the Supreme Court, which ruled in New Jersey v. New York. The border was redrawn using geographic information science data: It was decided that of the land fill area are territory of New Jersey and that, including the original island, are territory of New York. This caused some initial confusion, as some buildings straddled the interstate border. The ruling had no effect on the status of Liberty Island.
Although the island remained under federal ownership after the lawsuit, New Jersey and New York agreed to share jurisdiction over the land itself. Neither state took any fiscal or physical responsibility for the maintenance, preservation, or improvement of any of the historic properties, and each state has jurisdiction over its respective land areas. Jersey City and New York City then gave separate tax lot numbers to their respective claims.
Public access
Two ferry slips are located on the northern side of the basin that bisects Ellis Island. No charge is made for entrance to the Statue of Liberty National Monument, but there is a cost for the ferry service. A concession was granted in 2007 to Statue Cruises to operate the transportation and ticketing facilities, replacing Circle Line, which had operated the service since 1953. The ferries travel from Liberty State Park in Jersey City and the Battery in Lower Manhattan. Save Ellis Island offers guided public tours of the south side as part of the "Hard Hat Tour".A bridge to Liberty State Park was built in 1986 for transporting materials and personnel during the island's late-1980s restoration. Originally slated to be torn down in 1992, it remained after construction was complete. It is not open to the public. The city of New York and the island's private ferry operator have opposed proposals to use it or replace it with a pedestrian bridge, and a 1995 proposal for a new pedestrian bridge to New Jersey was voted down in the United States House of Representatives. The bridge is not strong enough to be classified as a permanent bridge, and any action to convert it into a pedestrian passageway would require renovations.
History
Precolonial and colonial use
The present-day Ellis Island was created by retreating glaciers at the end of the Wisconsin glaciation about 15,000 years ago. The island was described as a "hummock along a plain fronting the west side of the Hudson River estuary," and when the glaciers melted, the water of the Upper New York Bay surrounded the mass. The native Mohegan name for the island was "Kioshk", meaning "Gull Island", in reference to Ellis Island's former large population of seagulls. Kioshk was composed mostly of marshy, brackish lowlands that disappeared underwater at high tide. The Native American tribes who lived nearby are presumed to have been hunter-gatherers who used the island to hunt for fish and oysters, as well as to build transient hunting and fishing communities there. It is unlikely that the Native Americans established permanent settlements on Kioshk, since the island would have been submerged at high tide.In 1630, the Dutch bought Kioshk as a gift for Michael Reyniersz Pauw, who had helped found New Netherland. When the Dutch settled the area as part of New Netherland, the three islands in Upper New York Bay—Liberty, Black Tom, and Ellis Islands—were given the name Oyster Islands, alluding to the large oyster population nearby. The present-day Ellis Island was thus called "Little Oyster Island", a name that persisted through at least the early 1700s. During the early colonial period a sometime Maryland merchant named Isaac Bedloe purchased the island. Little Oyster Island was then sold to Captain William Dyre, then to Thomas Lloyd on April 23, 1686. The island was then sold several more times, including to Enoch and Mary Story. During colonial times, Little Oyster Island became a popular spot for hosting oyster roasts, picnics, and clambakes because of its rich oyster beds. Evidence of recreational uses on the island was visible by the mid-18th century with the addition of commercial buildings to the northeast shore.
By the 1760s, Little Oyster Island became a public execution site for pirates, with executions occurring at one tree in particular, the "Gibbet Tree". However, there is scant evidence that this was common practice. Little Oyster Island was acquired by Samuel Ellis, a colonial New Yorker and merchant from Wrexham, Wales, in 1774; the island was ultimately named for him. He unsuccessfully attempted to sell the island nine years later. Ellis died in 1794, and as per his will, the ownership of Ellis Island passed to his daughter Catherine Westervelt's unborn son, who was also named Samuel. When the junior Samuel died shortly after birth, ownership passed to the senior Samuel's other two daughters, Elizabeth Ryerson and Rachel Cooder.