Ellis Island Museum

Ellis Island's numerous dormitories were filled to capacity nearly every night with immigrants who were being temporarily detained. Many immigrants stayed in large dormitory rooms located here, along these balconies.

"Ellis Island Chronicles," located in the east wing on the third floor of the museum, relates the history of Ellis Island. It describes the island's expansion from an uninhabited 3.3-acre sand bank to a 27.5-acre complex of brick and stone buildings that served as the United States' principal gateway for over three tumultuous decades.

The generosity of America's immigrants and their children created this exhibit, a collection of artifacts donated to the National Park Service by families who came to the United States during the peak immigration years of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Located in the east wing on the third floor of the museum, the items displayed here are indeed treasures from home, cherished belongings that immigrants carried with them from the old country to the new.

"Silent Voices" depicts the period after the government closed Ellis Island in 1954 and before restoration work began in the 1980s. During this period, the silent and empty immigration depot rapidly deteriorated into a ghostly complex of dilapidated buildings. The island's era of abandonment was captured by several photographers, whose eloquent images not only document Ellis Island before its restoration, but evoke an earlier period when millions of immigrants clamored through these halls.

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a proclamation that recognized the historical significance of Ellis Island by incorporating it into the Statue of Liberty National Monument. Liberty's 1986 centennial sparked an ambitious project to repair and refurbish the Statue and the main building on Ellis Island.