We nearly lost Ellis Island. We can do more to preserve this national treasure

On Sept. 18, 1956, an ad in The Wall Street Journal attracted considerable attention. The federal General Services Administration announced that it was “now authorized to offer one of the most famous landmarks in the world — Ellis Island — for private commercial use.”

The ad declared it would be a “perfect location” for an “oil storage depot,” among other possibilities. “27-1/2 Acres, Private Waterfront, Near Subway,” a headline in Business Week joked. Valuing the island and its buildings (35 of them comprising 513,000 square feet) at $6 million, the highest bid the GSA could initially muster was just $201,000.

About 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island until it was shuttered 70 years ago in 1954. Among them were Isaac Asimov, Josephine Baker, Abe Beame, Irving Berlin, Frank Capra, Cary Grant, Bob Hope and Frieda Kahlo, to name a few. Most newcomers arrived between 1892, when the station opened, and 1924, when the second quota law severely restricted immigration. Today more than 100 million Americans can trace their ancestry through Ellis Island.

What came after the failed sale of Ellis Island?

With the attempted sale a fiasco, President Dwight Eisenhower tossed the issue to Congress, which did nothing. New York Sen. Jacob Javits proposed using Ellis Island as a hospital for “narcotics addicts.” A New York City welfare commissioner wanted to create “homesteads” for the elderly. Rep. Paul Fino urged that Ellis Island become a mecca for “the legalized gambling spirit of the American people whose ancestors gambled for a new life in this land of ours,” certainly one of the more creative arguments for a casino.

The National Institute for Architectural Education ran a student competition on what to put on Ellis Island. Among the winners were a cathedral and a nuclear power plant. None of the finalists expressed much interest in honoring the immigrants who arrived at the station.

Eventually a developer bid $2 million and paid a $100,000 deposit. Frank Lloyd Wright, in what would be his last commission, prepared drawings for a project to house 7,000 people. Raised on a pedestal would be a series of plates topped by eight towers surrounded by three giant orbs, a settlement that looked like it was inspired by an Asimov sci-fi novel.

It was not until May 1965 that sufficient political will coalesced to keep Ellis Island federal property, when President Johnson made it part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument. That did not mean preservation, even of the iconic immigration hall. The Department of the Interior commissioned famed architect and former Nazi sympathizer Philip Johnson; his plan called for tearing down or making ruins of the buildings and constructing a giant hollow concrete monument. In its center would be a pool; around its exterior walls would be listed the names of immigrants.

That Ellis Island was not bulldozed was only because Congress never allocated enough money to do any large-scale project. In 1970, seeking to curry favor with Black voters and aid the cause of Black capitalism, President Richard Nixon’s administration gave a permit to “NEGRO,” the National Economic Growth and Reconstruction Organization, whose members had initially squatted on the island. Led by Thomas Matthew, a neurosurgeon who had been imprisoned for tax fraud, NEGRO planned to refurbish Ellis Island and set up factories and a hospital. Facing a lack of potable water, reliable electricity and heating, the group quietly abandoned Ellis Island the following year.

A turn for the better

In 1982 President Reagan appointed Lee Iacocco to head of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Centennial Commission, the public side of a "public-private" partnership. Iacocco also headed the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. The goal was to have the statue repaired and Ellis Island open for visitors in time for the nation’s bicentennial in 1986. Famous for resuscitating Chrysler, Iacocco, whose parents came through Ellis Island from Italy, oversaw an effort that raised more than $300 million.

The Statue of Liberty was foremost in fundraising. After all, it represented freedom, while Ellis Island was associated with inspections, detention, and tears (though only about 2% of immigrants were excluded). The Statue of Liberty was reopened July 3, 1986, but the immigration hall museum would not open fully until 1990. Last year 3.7 million people rode the ferries to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

Unfortunately, preservation of Ellis Island Hospital, a remarkable 725-bed institution on the south side, took a distant third place after the statute and immigration hall. The U.S. Public Health Service treated about 250,000 immigrants, seamen, soldiers, and federal employees there, with standards of care and mortality rates rivaling expensive private hospitals. Doctors also delivered 330 babies.

Several leading physicians got their start at Ellis Island, including Thomas Salmon, a prominent figure in the founding of American psychiatry. Salmon pressed for more humane treatment of the mentally ill and later, as an Army physician, fought for “shell shock” to be recognized as a medical condition. Rose Faughnan, one of the first women physicians in the PHS, founded a hospital in Passaic, New Jersey after practicing for eight years at Ellis Island.

Fiorella La Guardia worked as a translator — he spoke Italian, Yiddish and Croatian — at Ellis Island, including its hospital, while attending New York University law school at night. His experience there shaped not only his law practice but also prompted his pursuit of elected office.

A nonprofit preservation group, Save Ellis Island (saveellisisland.org), operates special “hard-hat” tours of the wards, laundry an operating room, and autopsy theater to promote the hospital’s fascinating history. Save Ellis Island is overseeing the stabilization of the hospital buildings, but the work is costly. It’s imperative that all of Ellis Island is preserved to tell the full story of what was until then the largest mass migration in human history.

Brian D. Scanlan is writing a book about the history of Ellis Island Hospital. Scanlan's wife, Gail Kauflin, his three daughters, and three granddaughters are among the 66 — and counting — descendants of Dora Christener Kauflin, who emigrated with her parents through Ellis Island in 1923.