50 Fun Facts About Ellis Island

A 1998 Supreme Court ruling placed most of Ellis Island in which state, ending a long border feud?

New Jersey was awarded the landfill added since the 1890s, roughly 23 of the island's 27.5 acres. The original patch beneath the main building stayed in New York.

Annie Moore, the first immigrant processed at Ellis Island in 1892, had sailed from which country?

Ireland was home for Annie Moore, who left County Cork with her two younger brothers to join their parents in New York. Memorials to her now stand on both sides of the Atlantic.

Ellis Island doctors wrote code letters on immigrants' coats, such as H for heart, using what?

Chalk let a doctor flag a problem in seconds: L meant lameness, E eyes, K hernia. Some immigrants reportedly wiped the mark off or turned their coats inside out.

Which film helped spread the myth that Ellis Island clerks changed immigrants' surnames?

The Godfather Part II shows an officer registering young Vito Andolini under the name of his village, Corleone. In reality families usually Americanized their own surnames, on average about five years after arriving.

For a healthy immigrant with papers in order, how long did Ellis Island inspection usually take?

A few hours was typical, usually three to five. The pace had to be quick: at the peak, inspectors were clearing about 5,000 people a day.

Which class of passengers went by barge to Ellis Island instead of being inspected aboard ship?

Steerage, or third class, meant the crowded lower decks. Officials assumed anyone who could afford a better cabin was unlikely to become a burden, so those travelers got a quick check on board.

Despite its fearsome reputation, what share of arrivals at Ellis Island were refused entry?

About 2% were sent back, usually over a contagious disease or doubts that they could support themselves. For those families the place earned the name Island of Tears.

Ellis Island doctors rolled back immigrants' eyelids to check for disease with which tool?

A buttonhook, sold for fastening tight boots and gloves, was used to turn the eyelid inside out. Many arrivals remembered the check as especially painful and terrifying.

Ellis Island's museum library is named for which British-born entertainer who arrived as a child?

Bob Hope, born in London, landed in 1908 at age four on his way to Cleveland. Congress put his name on the museum library in 2008, over the objections of the agency that runs the island.

A bridge has reached Ellis Island since 1986, yet how must ordinary visitors still get there?

By ferry is the only public way in. The bridge was put up to carry workers and materials for the 1980s restoration and has stayed closed to visitors ever since.

Since 1965, Ellis Island has been part of a national monument named for which nearby landmark?

The Statue of Liberty was declared a national monument in 1924. Ellis Island joined it by presidential proclamation in 1965, though visitors could not set foot there until 1976.

Which federal agency has run Ellis Island since 1965, museum and ruins alike?

The National Park Service took over 11 years after the last detainee left. In between, the government tried to sell the island as surplus property and drew a bid for a resort hotel.

Which auto executive did President Reagan pick in 1982 to raise money to restore Ellis Island?

Lee Iacocca headed the foundation that raised more than $350 million in donations. The money paid for the work that let the main building reopen as a museum in 1990.

Ellis Island takes its name from Samuel Ellis, a colonial merchant who came from which country?

Wales was the homeland of Samuel Ellis, a merchant from Wrexham. He advertised the island for sale in 1785, found no buyer, and still owned it when he died in 1794.

Dutch colonists named Ellis Island after which shellfish that crowded the surrounding tidal flats?

Oysters gave it the name Little Oyster Island, and colonial New Yorkers held roasts and picnics there. Landfill for the immigration station later buried the beds.

What destroyed Ellis Island's first immigration station in 1897, five years after it opened?

A fire of unknown origin levelled the pine buildings overnight. Nobody died, but decades of immigration records burned, and the government ordered a replacement that could not burn.

Ellis Island's main building won a design gold medal at a 1900 world's fair in which city?

Paris awarded the gold medal to a design by Edward Tilton and William Boring. They had won the job in only the second federal design contest opened to private architects.

In which vast second-floor hall at Ellis Island did inspectors question each new arrival?

The Registry Room, also known as the Great Hall, rises to a 56-foot ceiling. Handrails once split the waiting crowd into lanes; benches replaced them around 1911.

German saboteurs' 1916 munitions blast damaged Ellis Island; on which nearby island did it happen?

Black Tom was a depot packed with munitions awaiting shipment to the Allies. The blast collapsed the main building's roof and shattered windows, yet every immigrant was evacuated safely.

Immigration law let Ellis Island inspectors exclude anyone likely to become a public what?

Charge was the legal term for anyone expected to need public support. Inspectors asked how much money each newcomer carried, hoping to see roughly $18 to $25.

At Ellis Island, a letter X marked on an immigrant's coat meant doctors suspected what?

A mental disorder was the suspicion behind an X, and a circled X meant definite signs. Anyone so marked was sent to a side room for a longer examination.

Which contagious eye disease sent more immigrants home from Ellis Island than any other illness?

Trachoma, a bacterial infection that roughens the inner eyelid, can end in blindness. It worried Washington enough that in 1913 funds were set aside to wipe it out at home.

Ellis Island inspectors wrote no names down; they checked arrivals against which pre-sailing list?

The ship's manifest was filled in at the port of departure and held each traveler's answers to a set of questions. Inspectors used it to cross-examine, and often corrected its mistakes.

When Ellis Island inspectors rejected an immigrant, who had to pay for the voyage home?

The steamship company had to carry a rejected passenger home at its own expense. That gave the lines a strong reason to screen travelers before they ever boarded.

An 1885 law meant Ellis Island arrivals could be turned away for admitting they already had what?

A job contract signed before sailing was outlawed to stop employers importing cheap labor. Yet the same newcomers also had to convince inspectors they could support themselves.

From 1917, adults arriving at Ellis Island had to prove they could do what in their own language?

Read a short passage, that is; children under 16 were exempt. Congress had to override President Wilson's veto to make the test law.

A 1924 immigration law emptied Ellis Island's inspection lines by setting what for each country?

Annual quotas were pegged to each nationality's share of the 1890 census, favoring older immigrant groups. Afterward the island mostly held people awaiting deportation.

After 1924, where were immigrants screened before sailing, ending Ellis Island's main role?

American consulates took over the paperwork and medical checks, so a traveler held a visa before boarding. Only those with problems were still taken to the island.

About how many immigrants were processed at Ellis Island between 1892 and its closing in 1954?

About 12 million people came through, and by one estimate some two-fifths of Americans have an ancestor among them. The busiest single day, in April 1907, brought 11,747 arrivals.

What nickname stuck to the Ellis Island spot where admitted immigrants met their waiting relatives?

The Kissing Post was a plain wooden column, named for the hugs and tears of families meeting again once the inspection was over.

Which American songwriter arrived at Ellis Island from Russia as a five-year-old in 1893?

Irving Berlin, then Israel Baline, was kept in a pen with his brother and sisters until officials cleared the family. He went on to write an estimated 1,500 songs, God Bless America among them.

Which future New York City mayor worked as an interpreter at Ellis Island before entering politics?

Fiorello La Guardia was certified to interpret in Italian, German, Yiddish and Croatian. He left in 1910, the year he qualified as a lawyer, and an airport in Queens now carries his name.

What did an official hand Annie Moore for being the first person to pass inspection at Ellis Island?

A $10 gold coin went to Annie Moore on New Year's Day 1892. For decades she was confused with a namesake who died in Texas; in fact she lived out her life on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Before Ellis Island opened, where at the tip of Manhattan were New York's immigrants processed?

Castle Garden, a former fort and concert hall, served as New York's immigrant depot from 1855 to 1890. The round sandstone building later housed the city's aquarium.

Angel Island, nicknamed the Ellis Island of the West, lies in the bay of which city?

San Francisco was the port that Angel Island's detainees were trying to enter between 1910 and 1940. Detention there could drag on for months; the longest recorded stay was 22 months.

What did Angel Island detainees carve into barracks walls, a find that saved the buildings in 1970?

Poems had been cut into the wood by men held there and later hidden under layers of paint. A ranger spotted them when the barracks were about to be demolished.

Which 1882 law lay behind the long interrogations of arrivals at Angel Island?

The Chinese Exclusion Act stayed on the books until 1943. Because it still admitted a few exempt groups, such as merchants and students, inspectors questioned arrivals at length to test their claims.

Angel Island arrivals who posed as the children of American citizens were called what?

Paper sons bought identities that existed only in documents, after a 1906 fire destroyed public birth records. Interrogators tried to catch them out, so many spent months memorizing answers prepared with their sponsors.

Which later chronicler of child labor took his camera and his students to Ellis Island from 1904?

Lewis Hine was a schoolteacher who led his classes out to the island and made more than 200 plates between 1904 and 1909. The work convinced him a camera could drive reform.

Which 2012 storm damaged Ellis Island and kept the museum closed to visitors for a full year?

Hurricane Sandy struck in October 2012, and the island reopened exactly one year later with only part of the museum open.

Ellis Island sits in Upper New York Bay close to the mouth of which river?

The Hudson estuary used to swallow much of the spot at high tide, because the original island was a low, marshy hummock. Most of today's ground was built up later.

Tours of Ellis Island's abandoned hospital complex are named after which piece of protective gear?

A hard hat gives the tour its name because the hospital buildings on the south side have never been restored. The ticket money goes toward preserving them.

Hostility after World War I targeted Ellis Island arrivals from which parts of Europe?

Southern and eastern Europeans were then arriving in large numbers, and the immigration laws of the 1920s were written to cut them back.

Which Spanish-born builder's firm gave Ellis Island's main hall its vaulted tile ceiling?

Rafael Guastavino patented his thin-tile vault in 1892, and the family firm also built ceilings for Boston Public Library and the whispering gallery at Grand Central Terminal.

Ellis Island closed in 1954 after freeing its last detainee, a merchant seaman from which country?

Norway was home to Arne Pettersen, who had been arrested for overstaying his shore leave. With him gone, the government expected to save about $900,000 a year by shutting the island.

Which actor starred in Ellis, a 2015 short film shot inside the abandoned Ellis Island hospital?

Robert De Niro stars in the short, directed by the French artist JR. JR's Unframed installation had already pasted archive photographs of immigrants across the hospital's walls.

Which arm of the federal government took over Ellis Island in 1890 to build an immigration station?

The Treasury Department was then responsible for constructing federal buildings. Congress first allotted $75,000 for the station and later doubled the sum.

Ellis Island's uniformed doctors all belonged to which agency, which also ran its hospital?

The Public Health Service began as the Marine Hospital Service and took its present name in 1912. Its surgeons worked both the inspection line and the island's wards.

Eight pavilions of Ellis Island's contagious disease hospital were reserved for which illness?

Measles filled wards A through H, identical two-story pavilions with independent ventilation ducts. Three more isolation wards handled graver cases such as scarlet fever and diphtheria.

During both world wars, Ellis Island held foreign nationals officially classed as what?

Enemy aliens held on the island in World War II eventually numbered about 7,000. In the earlier war, the crews of seized German vessels were locked in the baggage building.