The Horrors of Ellis Island

My book, The Times You Grew Up With, takes you back: https://paulmcallister.store Ellis Island processed twelve million immigrants between 1892 and 1954 — but only if they traveled in steerage. First- and second-class passengers were inspected aboard ship and never set foot on the island. This is the story of what actually happened inside the inspection station in New York Harbor: the six-second medical exam on the staircase, the chalk marks that could split a family apart, the buttonhook eye test for trachoma, and the sprawling hospital complex on Islands Two and Three where roughly 3,500 people died. It’s also the story of the WWII internment of enemy aliens in the same Great Hall that once processed hopeful arrivals — and of the abandoned south-side hospital buildings that remain unrestored and open to the weather, seventy years after the last detainee walked out. Sources: Lorie Conway, Forgotten Ellis Island: The Extraordinary Story of America’s Largest Immigration Hospital (Smithsonian Books, 2007) Vincent J. Cannato, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island (Harper, 2009) Augustus F. Sherman photograph collection and Public Health Service records, National Archives, Record Group 90 Ellis Island Oral History Collection, Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation (available via NPS) Thomas M. Pitkin, Keepers of the Gate: A History of Ellis Island (New York University Press, 1975) Save Ellis Island, “The Unrestored Hospital Complex,” site documentation and stabilization reports (saveellisisland.org)