Ellis Island

For more than six decades, Ellis Island in New York Harbor was the front door to America. From 1892 to 1954 it served as the nation's largest and busiest immigrant inspection station, where roughly 12 million people took their first steps as new arrivals to the United States.

An estimated 40% of Americans can trace an ancestor who passed through its Registry Room. Once nearly lost to neglect, the great hall and Main Building have been restored as the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration, part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument.

Ellis Island opened as a federal immigration station on January 1, 1892; the first person processed was Annie Moore, a teenager from Ireland. The original wooden buildings burned in 1897, and a new fireproof Main Building in the Beaux-Arts style — designed by the firm Boring & Tilton — opened in 1900.

At its peak the station processed extraordinary numbers of people; 1907 was its busiest year, with more than a million immigrants. Most passed through in a matter of hours, moving through the soaring Registry Room — the “Great Hall” — for medical and legal inspection. Some were detained, and a small fraction were turned back.

As immigration laws tightened in the 1920s the island's role declined, and it finally closed in 1954. After decades of neglect, the Main Building was restored and reopened in 1990 as a museum. Ellis Island is administered by the National Park Service as part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument.