New York Times: Officials of Ellis Island estimate that as many as one in three Americans can trace their ancestry to immigrants who landed there from overseas.
Now, the officials are focusing on the other roughly 200 million newcomers who arrived in the United States before Ellis Island opened its doors or after it stopped becoming a portal for immigrants. The national historic site in New York Harbor is halfway through a transformation into a more inclusive National Museum of Immigration.
“The Ellis story is a finite story; American immigration is continuing,” said David Luchsinger, the National Park Service superintendent who oversees the island and the Statue of Liberty.
And Stephen A. Briganti, president of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, said, “If we didn’t tell the current story we would be obsolete in 25 years.”
As part of a $20 million project privately financed by the foundation, 20,000 square feet, comprised of a former railroad ticket office and offices for Park Service staff, are being converted into a new museum that encompasses the story of immigration from the 16th century through today. The first phase, which covers 1550 to 1892, when Ellis Island began operating as an immigration station, opened informally last fall. The second phase, which focuses on the period after 1924—, when strict quotas on foreigners were imposed and the island was used primarily as a detention center—, and especially on the influx following World War II, is scheduled to open about a year from now with a formal ceremony to celebrate the new museum.
Improvements to the main building’s exhibition space also include a digital “flag of faces” — photographs of immigrants that people can submit online — and a giant globe that will trace patterns of immigration through history.
Ellis Island draws about two million visitors a year, and even more are expected this year while the interior of the Statue of Liberty is closed for structural renovations.
“The government originally wanted to get rid of it,” Mr. Briganti said of its outpost on Ellis Island. “No one was going to let the statue go, but this place well could have disappeared.”
About 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island over three decades. Planning for restoration began in 1984. The first year was spent pumping warm air into the buildings to dry them out after years of exposure to the elements. Later, the main building was renovated. Records of arrivals of 25 million foreigners were computerized and can be searched online. The new museum is replacing a bare-bones exhibit that was considered thin and anachronistic.
“We wanted it to be accurate, not mythical,” said Mr. Briganti, a former junior high school history teacher whose grandparents arrived through Ellis from Naples a century ago.
The first phase is titled “Journeys: The Peopling of America 1550-1890.” Guided by a panel of historians and designed by Edwin Schlossberg’s ESI Design, it features translucent panels and video screens that explain why people left their homelands, how they got here (voyages took weeks, even on steamships), how they were dispersed across the country in immigrant enclaves (more than half of those who came through Ellis Island did not remain in metropolitan New York), and how they struggled and survived to build America.
The exhibition also explores the experience of slaves who arrived involuntarily (a panel for children asks: “How would you feel if you were taken from your family and sent to a strange country?”) and a narrative of the American Indians whom immigrants displaced.
The panel of historians recruited by the foundation also mined history for controversies that resonate today. Among them were illegal immigration (paupers were deported under a 1794 Massachusetts law; Chinese immigrants were excluded in 1882) and bilingualism (German was considered a second language; in the late 18th century, Congress considered requiring that all government documents be published in English and German).
“I hope,” Mr. Briganti said, “that people who visit will leave with an appreciation of what immigrants have done for this country.”
Now, the officials are focusing on the other roughly 200 million newcomers who arrived in the United States before Ellis Island opened its doors or after it stopped becoming a portal for immigrants. The national historic site in New York Harbor is halfway through a transformation into a more inclusive National Museum of Immigration.
“The Ellis story is a finite story; American immigration is continuing,” said David Luchsinger, the National Park Service superintendent who oversees the island and the Statue of Liberty.
And Stephen A. Briganti, president of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, said, “If we didn’t tell the current story we would be obsolete in 25 years.”
As part of a $20 million project privately financed by the foundation, 20,000 square feet, comprised of a former railroad ticket office and offices for Park Service staff, are being converted into a new museum that encompasses the story of immigration from the 16th century through today. The first phase, which covers 1550 to 1892, when Ellis Island began operating as an immigration station, opened informally last fall. The second phase, which focuses on the period after 1924—, when strict quotas on foreigners were imposed and the island was used primarily as a detention center—, and especially on the influx following World War II, is scheduled to open about a year from now with a formal ceremony to celebrate the new museum.
Improvements to the main building’s exhibition space also include a digital “flag of faces” — photographs of immigrants that people can submit online — and a giant globe that will trace patterns of immigration through history.
Ellis Island draws about two million visitors a year, and even more are expected this year while the interior of the Statue of Liberty is closed for structural renovations.
“The government originally wanted to get rid of it,” Mr. Briganti said of its outpost on Ellis Island. “No one was going to let the statue go, but this place well could have disappeared.”
About 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island over three decades. Planning for restoration began in 1984. The first year was spent pumping warm air into the buildings to dry them out after years of exposure to the elements. Later, the main building was renovated. Records of arrivals of 25 million foreigners were computerized and can be searched online. The new museum is replacing a bare-bones exhibit that was considered thin and anachronistic.
“We wanted it to be accurate, not mythical,” said Mr. Briganti, a former junior high school history teacher whose grandparents arrived through Ellis from Naples a century ago.
The first phase is titled “Journeys: The Peopling of America 1550-1890.” Guided by a panel of historians and designed by Edwin Schlossberg’s ESI Design, it features translucent panels and video screens that explain why people left their homelands, how they got here (voyages took weeks, even on steamships), how they were dispersed across the country in immigrant enclaves (more than half of those who came through Ellis Island did not remain in metropolitan New York), and how they struggled and survived to build America.
The exhibition also explores the experience of slaves who arrived involuntarily (a panel for children asks: “How would you feel if you were taken from your family and sent to a strange country?”) and a narrative of the American Indians whom immigrants displaced.
The panel of historians recruited by the foundation also mined history for controversies that resonate today. Among them were illegal immigration (paupers were deported under a 1794 Massachusetts law; Chinese immigrants were excluded in 1882) and bilingualism (German was considered a second language; in the late 18th century, Congress considered requiring that all government documents be published in English and German).
“I hope,” Mr. Briganti said, “that people who visit will leave with an appreciation of what immigrants have done for this country.”
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