SIGHTSEEING ELLIS ISLAND

SIGHTSEEING ELLIS ISLAND

Ellis Island became an immigration station in 1892,mainly to handle the massive influx from southern and eastern Europe. It became the first stop for more than twelve million prospective immigrants, all steerage-class passengers, and today some one hundred million Americans can trace their roots here.

Ellis Island reopened in 1990 as a Museum of Immigration after it has been abandoned for decades.

The huge, vaulted Registry Room has been left bare, with just a couple of inspectors’ desks and American flags.The museum’s American Family Immigration History Center offers an interactive research database that contains information from ship manifests and passenger lists concerning over 22 million immigrants who passed through the entire Port of New York between 1892 and 1924.

Outside, the names of over 600,000 immigrants who passed through the building over the years are engraved in copper on the “Wall of Honor,” which still accepts submissions, though it controversially requires families to pay $100 for their ancestors’ inclusion.

Ellis island was the second station to process imigration after Battery Park. If you want to know how to enhance your holiday in New York sightseeing this impressive landmark which contains the history of the european immigrants, please go here.

The island that houses the statue of Liberty has a longer story and begins with its use as quarantine station for the yellow fever.

Discover here how you can visit the statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in one day.