Oombanjo,

I worked as an interpretive historian at Ellis Island, for the National Park Service, for a couple of years in the late 1970's. Perhaps PoppaGator was on one of my tours! At that time you had to go through a very restricted route, with rangers, because it was so dangerous due to deterioration. Today major portions of Island One, the original landmass (built up by ballast and landfill) are open to the public to roam at will. I don't like it nearly as well, but that's because I had to learn so much about it and on practically every tour I had people who had immigrated and could tell us their stories. Alas, many of them are gone now and the island feels more empty because of it.

My friend Tom Bernardin, who worked with me at Ellis, lives in New York and has continued to work around Ellis, though as a professional tour guide. Some dozen or more years ago he advertised nationally for recipes that came over from the old world with Ellis immigrants. The response was wonderful and he has just now gotten a reprinting of the The Ellis Island Immigrant Cookbook. If you visit his web site you'll find a lot of information and links. He leads tours again now that the island is open.

I disagree with the recommendation that a tour from Manhattan is a great way to spend a day. It's a hellish, hot, long wait in the park. Plus you're stuck going first to Liberty and waiting around there for a while before the next leg of the trip to Ellis. The best bet is to pay $5.00 to the water taxi (over by the old fire station to the west of Castle Clinton and the dock for the Statue and Ellis) and get a quick ride across the harbor to Jersey City. They drop you off in Liberty State Park near the large restored train station (where immigrants from Ellis used to board trains to head into the U.S. if their heart's desire was to go somewhere other than New York City). Walk around to the front of that and buy a ticket to Ellis. It's a short wait, and easy ride, and when you're done at Ellis you can ride the Circle Line boat back to Manhattan, you don't need to retrace your steps.

Bernardin's book is only one of many sources of information. One that I think is still by far the best overall history of the island is by Ann Novotny called Strangers at the Door. (It's out of print, but I found a few via a search at Bookfinder.com) Ellis was once called Gibbet Island, and Bucking Island, and housed Fort Gibson. There were four forts protecting NY Harbor during the 1812 War, Fort Gibson on the mudflat that became Ellis, Castle Williams on Governor's Island, Castle Clinton on pilings at the foot of Manhattan, and the star-shaped Fort Wood on Bedloe's Island, which became the base for the statue on what is now called Liberty Island. Liberty Island has been squabbled over by New York and New Jersey, but is firmly in New York's hands. New York lost it's bid to keep all of Ellis, and now the landfill portion, Islands 2 and 3 (they're filled in now, but there used to be a second ferry slip, making the island look like a large "E.") New Jersey is beginning to offer tours of those hospital and contagious disease wards, though it is in very rough condition. The National Park Service has done some very interesting and innovative work to stabilize and begin to restore the buildings, and I believe some of it is quite original in the field of historic preservation.

From 1855 until 1890, each state processed it's own immigrants. There was a lot of corruption and abuse. In NYC the processing took place at Castle Garden. This former theater was in it's earliest life a fort called Castle Clinton. After the immigrant station closed, it was converted into the New York Aquarium, until the Brooklyn tunnel was built beneath it and the aquarium was moved to Coney Island. But I digress. . .

Federal law took the processing of immigrants away from the individual states in 1890, and in 1892 Ellis opened. In 1897 a fire destroyed the building and all of the records up to that point. It was rebuilt in brick and concrete and tile and reopened on January 1, 1900. They added on quite a bit for many years. 1906 and 07 were the heaviest years of immigrant processing there. By 1921 the Social Darwinists had pushed for radical renovation of the immigration laws and large groups were restricted or their numbers (in the form of quotas) were very limited. By 1924 a second immigration law pretty much put the end to the major job at Ellis. A number of other activities took place out there, during war time, and in later years it was noted more as a place to go if you were being deported. The Coast Guard was there for a number of years, and the Island finally closed in November of 1954.

Dr. Peter Sammartino in New Jersey was instrumental in getting the island open again. In 1975 Lyndon Johnson signed legislation binding it to the Statue of Liberty as a national monument, and in 1976 it opened for limited tours.

This is a history of the place, it isn't telling you about the people who passed through there. I don't know the song you're learning, so don't know what it talks about. But for some of the earliest published accounts of what immigrants experienced out there, look for a book by Thomas Pitkin called Keepers of the Gate. He was one of the Commissioners out at Ellis, and was responsible for cleaning up a lot of corruption. You'll find a lot of information in later sources.

SRS