The New Ellis Island - Improvements for the Arriving Immigrants

Introduction

The article "The New Ellis Island" from January 1908 outlines significant improvements made to Ellis Island's facilities to better accommodate and process arriving immigrants. The upgrades included enhanced dormitories, improved medical facilities, and expanded dining areas, aimed at increasing efficiency and comfort.

Group of Immigrants at Ellis Island, 1904. Courtesy of New York Public Library. GGA Image ID # 219021498b

(Recalling the study on Ellis Island in our last Immigration number (January 1907), our readers will thank us for securing permission from The Christian City to use this statement of "the new Ellis Island," which it culled from the good things of Charities and the Commons—Editor.

There are few places where the social viewpoint is more concretely and widely expressed than at Ellis Island. Process changes will affect the comfort of a new million people each year. Commissioner Watchorn is an official who is adequate to an immense situation.

Additions include:

• More beds.
• Cleaner quarters.
• More restaurant tables.
• A larger restaurant.
• A new immense baggage room.
• One level for the entering immigrant instead of forty-two steps up and forty-two steps down under a mountainous backfill of luggage.

Also, additional sanitary detention rooms, an island hospital with five hundred beds where children with measles and insane adults will receive humane and scientific treatment and more skylights for dark corridors—these are a few of the reforms now making.

An analysis of the spirit in which the enlarging program is carried out would show:

An efficient kindness;

Executive insight;

The desire for more light—skylight, daylight, white tiling in place of black pitch-and-tar flooring;

Increasing centralization and unification—one large dining hall in place of small unconnected rooms;

There should be one hospital eight hundred feet from the commissioner's rooms instead of four city-subsidized hospitals two to twelve miles distant.

General Treatment

A steady, unremitting, progressively successful attempt was made to handle the immigrants with decency and helpfulness. They are not roughly jostled and herded like cattle—in the way that some New York policemen treat an East Side crowd. Julian A. Dimock, the nature photographer, spent two weeks at Ellis Island in March, photographing types of various nationalities.

He was unattended and roamed through all the corridors, detention rooms, and receiving floors. In fourteen days, he saw no single instance of brutality from an attendant to an immigrant.

Of course, men on duty grow tired, careless, and curt—here and in church ushering. But the effort is never relaxed to handle 2,500 and 5,000 persons a day skillfully and kindly.

Dormitory Improvements

To consider some of the reforms in detail, the main building's upper story has a set of sleeping compartments instead of the single long corridor dormitory along each flank.

Visitors will remember the long dormitory as dark, dirty, and oppressively gloomy. It contained 350 beds with no walls of separation. The atmosphere was more intense than in a Bowery 10—and 15-cent lodging house. The floor was a mixture of tar and pitch, which was said to be antiseptic.

The only justification for the word was that dirt spilled on it was invisible and, to that extent, nonexistent. The walls were dark—the color of microbes, germs, and bacilli. The beds, of iron strips, were anchored to their places. As now arranged, the sleeping compartments have an average of nine beds in each, where differences in nationality are observed to all possible limits.

The beds are of tightly woven navy canvas, three in a layer, and are pulled ceiling high, out of the way of the floor cleaners, by a ratchet. The steam-heating radiators are set on six—to nine-inch bronze pedestals so that the mop can go under where bread and fruit accumulate.

The flooring is white vitrified tile with a nine-inch pitch leading to a drain. Each compartment has a set of water closets and washing bowls (in place of the one end of the building).

A hose is attached to each faucet in each compartment each morning, and hot water is turned on the tile flooring and walls. The closets work with a four-minute flush. An overhead six-horsepower engine draws out the impure air and drives in cool air along a galvanized iron duct.

Many of the compartments are already in perfect working order. Enter at 9.30 a.m., and you will see the floor covered with breadcrumbs, fruit drippings, and lint from the black blankets.

The beds are hoisted, the blankets thrown into navy canvas bags, and the floor and walls steamed and then brushed clean. The window ledges have been built at a steep pitch so that fruit and refuse are no longer piled there as in former days.

Four more compartments—two at each end—with 104 additional beds will be constructed at the north and south ends of this dormitory floor.

On what is now the receiving floor, a forty-foot width, and the total length will be partitioned off for beds. The central portion of the main building will contain clean sleeping quarters for 1,000 to 1,200 women and children, a gain of 400 beds.

There will be occasional small compartments where an entire family can be lodged without the grievous separation for the first night in a new land. Legitimate sentiment has been considered at every turn, whenever it could be expressed in terms of economical building laws.

New Baggage Room

The present baggage room is on the ground floor of the main building. It consumes valuable space at the expense of human comfort. After admittance, the immigrants climb forty-two steps to the examining floor and then descend the same distance with their bags and babies.

With the new building in working order, the immigrant will pass through a covered way to the main building on the ground floor for his examination, continue to the new building, where his baggage is handled from the barges in an endless chain, and keep on at the same level to the barges at the cribbing on the west, where he will embark for his railroad port.

This holds for ninety percent of all arrivals. Ten percent of detained cases will be lifted by elevators to their detention rooms. An electric railway is planned for New York baggage. There will be space for fifty inspectors instead of the present twenty-two.

The corridor from the examining room to the inquiry room is long and unlighted. Two skylights are being built. The inquiry room, which was open and noisy, has been partitioned off in oak and glass, with a wooden floor five inches above the black tar and pitch floor.

Inspection Room at Ellis Island, circa 1910. Detroit Publishing Company. Library of Congress LCCN 2016815980. GGA Image ID # 21907a0aea

Three dining rooms have been in operation. At different points, food has to be sorted, and the food itself is served at a reduced temperature. The seating capacity has been six hundred.

At extraordinary times, 3.000 have wished service at once, meaning five to six sittings. Four walled partitions are to be knocked out, and one great dining hall will be built with a capacity of 2,000. The kitchen will occupy the south end, now a men's detention room. Agate-ware service sent in on rubber-tired trucks will be used.

Long, low wooden structures have been erected for mentally unsound immigrants, where physicians, untroubled by the passing of hundreds a day, may observe them. Frequently, a week is given to a careful examination of their condition.

An electric railway for ashes has been in operation for one month. The same overhead trolley carries nearly a ton of coal in each load from the bins to the furnaces, and the latter bears away the ashes. Formerly, the coal and the ashes were wheeled at a loss of time. An incinerating plant burns up the garbage.

Local Hospitals

The area where local hospitals are being erected was once the open sea. The present administration has built it in with cribs, thirty-four feet deep and thirty-four feet wide, for walls and then filled it in with made-land trees from the swamps of Mississippi and other contributory matter.

To the west of the hospitals, a lawn is beginning to assert itself. To gain the green, 17,000 tons of soil from the New Jersey meadows were required.

After Monday, the insane dormitory will be open, with rooms for thirty. The dining rooms are charmingly situated, facing out to the profile of the Statue of Liberty. Automatically arranged baths, which ring a bell at the desired temperature, are provided.

There are rubber-tired wheel tubs for those unable to leave their rooms. The hospitals—a series of buildings with a quarter-mile corridor connecting all—will accommodate five hundred patients.

Currently, the immigration service pays the city of New York $100,000 a year for immigrant eases at St. Vincent's, St. Mary's, Dr. Combes's at Flushing, and the Long Island College hospitals.

The steamship companies are forced to defray the expenses of each case. At present, children with measles, for instance, are sent to the Long Island College Hospital. At the same time, the mothers must sit in ignorant anxiety at Ellis Island, waiting for a cure.

Under the new system, which is approaching completion, the mother can visit the child, as only an eight-hundred-foot-long covered passageway will divide them. Medical care and supervision will be provided by the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service.

For the needed appropriations to carry through these extensive reforms, Commissioner Watchorn found hearty cooperation between Commissioner-General Sargent and Secretary Straus.

Gleason, Arthur Huntington, "The New Ellis Island," in The Assembly Herald, Volume 14, No. 1, Philadelphia, January 1908 pp. 23-25

Arthur Huntington Gleason (1878-1923) was a socialist writer and associate editor of Collier's Weekly from 1908 to 1913 and later, during World War I, war correspondent for the New York Tribune and Century Magazine.

Conclusion

The renovations at Ellis Island represented a progressive approach to immigrant processing, emphasizing humane treatment and efficient handling. These improvements reflected the government's commitment to ensuring a more organized and supportive environment for newcomers.

Key Points

• 🛏️ Dormitory Upgrades: Introduction of smaller, cleaner sleeping compartments.
• 🏥 Enhanced Medical Facilities: A new hospital and sanitary rooms for better medical care.
• 🍽️ Expanded Dining Facilities: Larger dining halls to accommodate more people at once.
• 🎒 Improved Baggage Handling: Streamlined baggage processing with less physical effort for immigrants.
• 💧 Sanitation Improvements: Installation of new sanitation systems, including flush toilets and cleanable surfaces.
• 🌞 Increased Natural Light: Addition of skylights to previously dark areas.
• 🚉 Better Transportation: Plans for an electric railway to improve the flow of baggage and people.
• 🚪 Family Accommodation: Options for family lodging to prevent separation.
• 🏗️ Construction Efficiency: Efficient use of space, including new structures built on reclaimed land.
• 👨‍⚕️ Dedicated Healthcare: On-site medical care, reducing reliance on external hospitals.

Summary

1. Renovations Overview: The article details extensive upgrades to Ellis Island, including dormitory and medical facility improvements.
2. Medical and Sanitary Enhancements: New hospital facilities and sanitary measures were introduced to improve health conditions.
3. Dining and Accommodation: The expansion of dining areas and better family accommodation options were key features.
4. Baggage and Transportation: Improvements in baggage handling and transport systems were implemented to ease the process.
5. Increased Capacity: The enhancements aimed to accommodate more immigrants efficiently and comfortably.
6. Natural Light and Ventilation: Efforts to increase natural light and air circulation in previously dim and stuffy areas.
7. Family-Friendly Features: Facilities were updated to allow families to stay together during processing.
8. Efficient Construction: New structures were built on reclaimed land, making efficient use of space.
9. Comprehensive Healthcare: The new hospital facilities allowed for on-site medical treatment, ensuring better care.
10. Overall Impact: These improvements represented a significant step towards a more humane and efficient immigration process.