Great stories and information!

I didn't mean to *recommend* coming from Manhattan -- I was really trying to present the New Jersey approach as the better, if lesser-known route, and then babbled on, trying to say something nice about coming from Manhattan. Guess I "went overboard."

When I was a kid (in central Jersey), Ellis Island was closed, with buildings visibly falling apart, and the Statue of Liberty could be reached *only* from Battery Park. Our usual route to the city was via the Central Railroad of New Jersey, which brought us to the very terminal building now standing in Liberty State Park. In those days, it was in the middle of a busy railyard and industrial area, not isolated at the edge of a park like today. Passengers got off the train and straight onto a ferry to Liberty Street (Wall Street area, very near what would later become the WTC site). You could see the Statue (as well as the derilict bulding of Ellis Island) *very* close to the Jersey City ferry terminal, but to get there, you had to first cross the Hudson to NYC and then catch another boat -- the only S-of-L ferry at the time -- from the Battery.

By the time renovation began on Ellis Island, I had moved away, visiting New Jersey only occasionally (once every two years for a while -- my parents would visit us in New Orleans on alternate years). I visited the Statue *and* the newly renovated/reopened Ellis Island with my own kids in the early '80s, using the nice convenient Liberty State Park (NJ) approach. (For me, the railroad terminal building was as imposing and nostalgic as the more famous attractions.)