These turn-of-the-century photos of Ellis Island immigrants capture the diverse cultures and people that came to the United States in the search of something more.
An immigrant family on Ellis Island looks out across New York Harbor at the Statue of Liberty. Circa 1930s.FPG/Getty Images
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An Italian immigrant woman and her three children on their way to join the family patriarch in Scranton, Pennsylvania. 1908.Lewis W. Hine/Museum of the City of New York/Getty Images
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A young Russian Jewish immigrant. 1905.Lewis W. Hine/Stringer/Getty Images
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The Great Hall (Registry Room) at Ellis Island. The immigrants waiting here have passed the first mental inspection. Circa 1902-1913.Edwin Levick/New York Public Library
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A family that has been detained looks out the window. 1950.Bettmann/Contributor/Gety Images
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A group of immigrants traveling aboard a ship celebrate as they catch their first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in New York Harbor. 1915.Edwin Levick/Getty Images
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An immigrant woman from the eastern European region of Ruthenia. Circa 1906.Augustus F. Sherman/New York Public Library
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An Italian mother sits with her child as other immigrants look on in the background. 1905.Lewis W. Hine/Wikimedia Commons
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An immigrant family looks out over the water from Ellis Island. Circa 1912.Library of Congress
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Three Slavic women and a baby after arriving at Ellis Island. 1905.Lewis W. Hine/Wikimedia Commons
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Immigrants eat in the dining room for detainees. Circa 1900.Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images
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An Italian immigrant woman. Circa 1905-1914.Augstus F. Sherman/Library of Congress
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A group of would-be immigrants waves goodbye to the Statue of Liberty from aboard a Coast Guard ship after being turned away at Ellis Island and deported. 1952.Al Ravenna/New York World-Telegram and The Sun/Library of Congress
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Give young women sit on the dock. Circa 1910.George Grantham Bain/Library of Congress
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Inside the immigration processing facilities. Circa 1880.Fotosearch/Stringer/Getty Images
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An immigrant family that has been granted entry looks across the water toward New York as they wait for the ferry to take them there. 1925.Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images
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A German stowaway. 1911.Augustus F. Sherman/New York Public Library
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A large crowd of immigrants stands outside just after their arrival at Ellis Island. 1902.ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images
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Would-be immigrants stand in the detention pen on the roof of Ellis Island's Main Building, where they'll await deportation. Circa 1902.Library of Congress
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A young immigrant boy carries some of his baggage. Circa 1880.Fotosearch/Stringer/Getty Images
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"A family of seven sons and one daughter." 1904.Lewis W. Hine/New York Public Library
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Immigrant children sit side by side on a window ledge at the overcrowded immigration station at Ellis Island. 1920.Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images
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Immigrants line up at the money exchange counter. Circa 1902-1913.Edwin Levick/New York Public Library
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Immigrants stand near the dock at Ellis Island as the Statue of Liberty looms in the background. Circa 1900.Albert Harlingue/Roger Viollet/Getty Images
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The Main Building. Circa 1905.Library of Congress
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Guadeloupean woman. 1911.Augustus F. Sherman/New York Public Library
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A city health officer examines immigrant children amid a typhus scare. 1911.Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images
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A customs official attaches labels to the coats of a German immigrant family at the Registry Hall on Ellis Island. 1905.Lewis W. Hine/Stringer/Getty Images
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Two children stand near a luggage area. Circa 1915-1920.Bain News Service/Library of Congress
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An immigrant woman sleeps with her baggage on a bench. 1904.Lewis Hine/New York Public Library
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Immigrants gather near luggage. Circa 1917.Bain News Service/Library of Congress
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"Cossack man from the steppes of Russia." Circa 1905-1914.Augustus F. Sherman/New York Public Library
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Immigrants eat inside Ellis Island's dining hall, where they were provided with a free meal. Circa 1902-1913.Edwin Levick/New York Public Library
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Female immigrants stand in line for processing. Date unspecified.Bain News Service/Library of Congress
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"Two emigrants on the seashore." Circa 1912.Underwood & Underwood/Library of Congress
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Immigrants await processing inside the Main Building. Circa 1907-1917.Bain News Service/Library of Congress
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Three Dutch women. Circa 1905-1914.Augustus F. Sherman/New York Public Library
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Immigrants undergo medical examination. Circa 1902-1913.Edwin Levick/New York Public Library
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Immigrants stand outside one of Ellis Island's buildings. Date unspecified.Department of the Treasury/Public Health Service/National Archives and Records Administration
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Immigrants wait on the dock. 1912.Underwood & Underwood/Library of Congress
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Immigrants gather on the Ellis Island grounds. Date unspecified.Bain News Service/Library of Congress
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A large group of immigrants sits outdoors on Ellis Island. Date unspecified.Bain News Service/Library of Congress
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Children and adults pose inside one of Ellis Island's buildings. Date unspecified.Department of the Treasury/Public Health Service/National Archives and Records Administration
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Immigrants arrive at the Main Building. 1907.Library of Congress
44 Poignant Photos Of Ellis Island Immigrants That Convey The Hope And Hardship Of Coming To America
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After scraping together whatever money they could, packing their entire lives into bags and trunks, and spending as much as two weeks in the third class accommodations of massive transatlantic steamships, poor immigrants largely from southern and eastern Europe but ultimately from all over the world would converge en masse at the inspection station on New York's Ellis Island.
For each individual, it was an arduous journey the likes of which hardly even exists today. For the entire 12 million Ellis Island immigrants that became Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a whole, it was the largest overseas migration in human history.
Yet, as grueling and immense as this unprecedented wave of immigration was, the processing at Ellis Island was largely anything but. On the contrary, for the 98 percent of immigrants that made it in, the experience of passing through the Ellis Island gateway was surprisingly painless and quick.
In the vast majority of cases, you'd be in and out in three-to-five hours, during which time you'd answer a series of basic legal questions about you and your past, prove that you had just enough money (approximately 20 dollars, or about 500 dollars today) to set yourself up, and undergo a "six-second physical" in which a doctor would simply glance at you and make sure that you had no obvious, chronic ailments.
Essentially, if you could convince officials that you were neither criminal, insane, nor gravely ill, your passage through Ellis Island was almost perfunctory.
But as mundane and anticlimactic as the act of passing through the proverbial gate may have been, the underlying significance of that passage was truly momentous. You entered Ellis Island as an Italian, Hungarian, or Guadeloupean and left it as an American, part of an immense tide that helped make that country the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world and thus changed global history immeasurably to this day.
And it all centered on a small, largely manmade patch of land in Upper New York Bay. See what life was like for those who passed through that patch in the photo gallery of Ellis Island immigrants above.
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.
Savannah Cox holds a Master's in International Affairs from The New School as well as a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and now serves as an Assistant Professor at the University of Sheffield. Her work as a writer has also appeared on DNAinfo.
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Kuroski, John. "44 Poignant Photos Of Ellis Island Immigrants That Convey The Hope And Hardship Of Coming To America." AllThatsInteresting.com, May 11, 2017, https://allthatsinteresting.com/ellis-island-immigrants. Accessed October 4, 2024.
