Ellis IslandThe Golden Door

On the way to Ellis Island

"Oh God, I was sick. Everybody was sick. I don't even want to remember anything about that old boat. One night I prayed to God that it would go down because the waves were washing over it. I was that sick, I didn't care if it went down or not. And everybody else was the same way."-Bertha Devlin, an Irish immigrant in 1923

On the way to Ellis Island

"Many immigrants had brought on board balls of yarn, leaving one end of the line with someone on land. As the ship slowly cleared the dock, the balls unwound amid the farewell shouts of women, and the fluttering of the handkerchiefs, and the infants held high. After the yarn ran out, the long strips remained airborne, sustained by the wind, long after those on land and those at sea had lost sight of each other."-Luciano De Crescenzo, "The Ball of Yarn"

The Front Gate

"I remember my grandfather always telling me how he knew he could be rich in America because he saw riches in the architecture of Ellis Island. He felt that if they let the poor in such a gorgeous hall then life in this country was just."-Rosanne Welch, granddaughter of Giuseppe Italiano, and Italian immigrant in 1904

The Tag

The Great Hall

"They asked us questions. 'How much is two and one? How much is two and two?' But the next young girl, also from our city, went and they asked her, 'How do you wash stairs, from the top or from the bottom?' She says, 'I don't come to America to wash stairs.'"-Pauline Notkoff, a Polish Jewish immigrant in 1917

The Inspection

The Inspection

"The nurses were there. 'Ladies in White' we used to call them. They were very nice. I mean, they talked to the children. They stroked their hair, and they touched their cheeks and held our hands. When they gave us milk, sometimes, maybe if there was a pretty child, some nurses would kiss the child on the cheek. They were really very nice."-Elizabeth Martin, a Hungarian immigrant in 1920

The Inspection

"The doctors and everybody else that were supposed to interrogate us were dressed in uniforms. That had a terrible effect on me. We were scared of uniforms. It took us back to the Russian uniforms that we were running away from."-Katherine Beychok, a Russian Jewish immigrant in 1910

The Inspection

"My sister developed warts on the back of her hand so they put a chalk 'X' on the back of her coat. The Xs were put aside to see whether they had to be reexamined or deported. If they deported my sister we couldn't let her go. Where would she go if they deported her? Some kind man, I don't know who he was, told my sister to turn her coat around. She had a nice plush coat with a silk lining, and they turned her coat around."-Victoria Saifatti Fernández, a Macedonian immigrant in 1916

The Inspection

B – BackC - ConjunctivitisCT – TrachomaE – EyesF – FaceFT – FeetG – GoiterH – HeartK – HerniaL – LamenessN – NeckP – Physical and LungsPG – PregnancyS – SenilitySC – Scalp SI – Special InquiryX – Suspected Mental defect

The Dormitories

"At Ellis Island there was nothing to do. You just had to sit around. You could walk up and down among the crowds and wait for the man to come with chewing gum or an apple, but you couldn't go anyplace…. Even prisoners go out into the yard. But we were kept in a place that was all enclosed. I could walk up and down, back and forth, and up and down, and back and forth. That was the extent of my exercise."-Ettie Glaser, English, at Ellis Island in 1923, age 18