Ellis Island is the headquarters of District No. 3 (southern New York and northern New Jersey) of the twenty-two Immigration and Naturalization Districts into which the United States is divided. It lies about one mile southwest of the Battery in Upper Bay. Its shape is that of two parallel rectangles joined by filled land at their western ends, but separated for the most part by a narrow rectangular basin which contains a ferry slip.
The bulbous towers of some of the island's buildings give it a faintly Byzantine appearance. The buildings on the east side house administrative offices, a dormitory with space for one thousand beds, a dining hall that can seat a thousand people, rooms for hearings, a recreation room, a room for social welfare workers, a library, and a kindergarten. On the north wall of the dining hall, a mural done by the Federal Art Project depicts the contributions of immigrants to the building of America. Other important units are the general hospital, used now, because of the great decline in immigration, for treatment of American sailors and marines; the contagious disease hospital; and guarded rooms for dangerous and violent deportees. The most modern building is a ferry house, near the center of the island, built with PWA funds in 1935.
A staff of more than five hundred, under a District Commissioner and a District Director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service of the U.S. Department of Labor, attends to the administration of inspection, boarding, records, registry, bonding, passports, and naturalization matters.
When the Dutch colonists used this island as a picnic ground and called it Oyster Island, it had only about three acres of land. It was known also as Bucking Island, and after the pirate Anderson was hanged there in 1765, as Gibbet Island. In the eighteenth century Samuel Ellis, a Manhattan dealer in general merchandise and owner of a New Jersey farm, bought it. After he died, it passed from his heirs to John A. Berry and, in 1808, to New York State. New York immediately sold the island for ten thousand dollars to the Federal Government. For a time it was used as a government arsenal, to the alarm of near-by Jersey residents who feared an explosion. In 1814 it became the site of Fort Gibson.
By 1890 Castle Garden at the Battery (see page 308) could no longer cope with the successive tidal waves of immigrants, and construction of another station on the island was authorized. The name Ellis Island was restored in 1891, and in January, 1892, the station went into operation. Fire destroyed the buildings in 1897, but twenty-eight new ones were constructed.
Two more islands were created by the dumping of earth and rock in 1898 and 1905. Today, although causeways and filled land make one 27 1/2-acre island of the three, employees still designate certain sections as Island No. 1, Island No. 2, and Island No. 3.
Long the wide-open door to the New World, Ellis Island is now barely ajar. In 1907, the station's peak year, 1,285,349 immigrants were admitted. As many as five thousand bewildered aliens passed through some days, so greatly overcrowding the island that living conditions there became notorious. The total fell sharply to 326,700 in 1915 and to 23,068 in 1933. Strict adherence to quota limits checked the influx. Most present-day immigrants do not go to Ellis Island; only those whose eligibility for admission is questioned are examined there. Early in 1939 the quotas of only the Central European countries were filled. ---New York City Guide, 1939
Since 1990, Ellis Island has been operated as a museum about U.S. immigration and is run by the National Park Service as part of Statue of Liberty National Monument. Once the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States, since 1990 Ellis Island has served millions of visitors.