Cultural Landscape Report - Site History, Existing Conditions, and Analysis: Ellis Island

Stakely, Tracey

A Cultural Landscape Report (CLR) is the primary document used in the treatment and longterm management of cultural landscapes. It provides site managers with a comprehensive site history, identifies important landscape characteristics for the property, compares and analyzes the historic and existing conditions, discusses the site’s significance and historic integrity, and provides treatment recommendations to guide future site development. This report represents the completion of phases one and two of a threephase project intended to develop a complete CLR for Ellis Island. This document includes a comprehensive site history from prehistory to the present, with emphasis on the site’s 1892 to 1954 period of significance, when the island was actively used as an immigration station. It also includes a complete record of the island’s existing landscape condition and provides an analysis of the island’s significance and integrity. A treatment plan for the island’s landscape will be developed during phase three of the project. When the Ellis Island immigration station closed in 1954, the island was abandoned. Its management was turned over to the federal government’s General Services Administration; however, the facilities remained unused for the next decade. In 1965 the island became part of the National Park Service (NPS) but the agency was not able to begin any substantial preservation efforts until the 1980s. From 1984 to 1990 the main immigration building on Island One underwent an extensive rehabilitation. The updated facility was opened to the public as the state-of-the-art Ellis Island Immigration Museum and has subsequently seen visitation rise to more than five million visitors per year. Islands Two and Three were not included in the 1980’s rehabilitation. For the most part, the features on these islands, including hospital wards, maintenance facilities, residences, connected walkways, and outdoor spaces, have been derelict and abandoned since 1954 and remain off-limits to visitors. The landscape of Ellis Island dates primarily to a 1939 planting plan implemented in the 1940s. Remnants from this era include a deteriorated circulation system, overgrown vegetation, and many unstable and deteriorating buildings and site features. This report was prepared using a variety of primary and secondary sources to complete “thorough” research as defined by NPS DO-28. Several repositories were consulted, including: · Statue of Liberty / Ellis Island Library and Museum Collection · NPS Boston Support Office · NPS Cultural Resources Management Studies Collection, Charlestown, MA · NPS Technical Information Center files, Denver, CO · National Archives, New York , NY · National Archives, Washington, DC · New York Public Library · Museum of the City of New York Most of the documentation was primary source material in the form of photographs, maps, and construction documentation. The author examined photographs at several locations, including collections from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), U. S. Public Health Service, U. S. Coast Guard, NPS, and an extensive early twentieth-century series taken by former Ellis Island Commissioner of Immigration William Williams. Early maps located at the National Archives provided documentation on the island’s military use, while original building specifications were also available for nearly all of the island’s immigration structures and facilities. The author reviewed additional plans and drawings from the NPS Technical Information Center, including digitally scanned copies of selected drawings housed in the park’s library. Several oral histories of former island employees, residents, and immigrants provided additional primary source material. This collection is also housed in the park library.

Cultural Landscape Report - Site History, Existing Conditions, and Analysis: Ellis Island

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