Hey all, sorry about the dearth of posts recently. I just got back from DC, where I went to meet a friend and take in the sites. Among other things, I caught the Adalbert Volck exhibit, which I highly recommend. With a heat index of 105 all one could do was stay inside. Alas, no Mall this time around. I am now checking my inbox I received this notification that Ellis and Liberty Island, for the first time ever, are having extended summer hours. This is a great trip for those looking to get away from the city without leaving the city.

Enjoying summer here in Brooklyn…

The hows and whys involved in the creation of museums and national parks are fascinating. Often when people visit a historical site such as Gettysburg, Shiloh, or Antietam they merely assume that the current layout of the site was preordained. Nothing could be further from the truth. Take Shiloh National Military Park as an example. The historical site is about 4,000 square acres. The battlefield is where it is because two armies fought there, but the park developed the way it did due to to the political and economic vagaries of the late nineteenth century. Perhaps a farmer would not sell his orchard where hard fighting took place to the government. Or maybe a statue for some general had to be redesigned because the money ran out. Timothy B. Smith’s The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation is the essential introduction to the subject. The same principles apply to natural sites as well. Horace Albright discusses the sausage making involved in the creation and expansion of Yosemite, Yellowstone, and other places in his chatty The Birth of the National Park Service. How do you make sure the Grand Tetons will be preserved forever and not subject to development? Well, you wine and dine the right people.

When I was a volunteer at Ellis Island I became fascinated with the history of the immigration station. I am old enough to remember the renovation undertaken in the 1980s with the assistance of Lee Iacocca among others. The island ceased its immigration work in 1954 and sat, vacant and dilapidating, in New York Harbor for a decade. In 1964 Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall recommended to President Lyndon Johnson that Ellis be declared a nation monument. Johnson signed the legislation on May 11, 1965. One month later renowned architect Philip Johnson was commissioned to create a museum, and in February 1966 Johnson unveiled his design. Johnson’s Ellis Island would have included stabilized ruins of the immigration building and the hospital, which would have been left in a state of semi-development to promote contemplation. These would have been accompanied by a 130 foot spiral monument visible from Brooklyn and Manhattan. Johnson said at the time of the unveiling that “I wanted to call attention to the island without insulting the Statue of Liberty” just across the water. The circular structure would have stood twenty feet shorter than the base of Lady Liberty. It is an intriguing concept that of course was never carried out, probably because it would have cost twice as much as Congress appropriated for the undertaking.

The island remained as it was for another decade until the Park Service began giving tours on a limited basis starting Memorial Day weekend 1976, six weeks before the Bicentennial. Finally in the 1980s renovations began in earnest and in September 1990 the museum as we know it opened its doors. Philip Johnson’s idea is an intriguing “what if” and something to contemplate the next time one is at Ellis Island, or any historical site you happen to visit.

(image/NPS)

It is Sunday morning. I am having my coffee and listening to a cd of Gregorian chants we bought at the Cloisters. I am headed to Greenwood in a bit before coming home to get some work done. This small piece about islands two and three at Ellis came through my inbox. One of the highlights of my time there was when one of the senior rangers received permission to take newer staff over to these islands that the public cannot yet visit. The Save Ellis Island group has done great work over the past few years giving tours and raising the funds necessary to renovate and open the WPA-era Ferry Building. It is a daunting task, but SEI and the Park Service are now working to open more structures in the coming year. The best source on the hospitals at Ellis Island is Lorie Conway’s Forgotten Ellis Island and its accomapnying film. There are layers and layers of history in New York Harbor.

Enjoy your Sunday.

I am off work today and am going into the city in awhile to have lunch with one of the park rangers from Ellis Island. I have not been to Ellis since transferring to Governors Island nearly a year ago. I still haven’t seen the new exhibit, Journeys: The People of America 1550-1890, that opened later in 2011. I am hoping to see it next month when an old friend from library school visits from Texas. The exhibit is phase one in the renovation of the immigration museum. I am pleased that it is now up and running. Many believe that Ellis Island is the story of American immigration, not realizing that the depot opened in 1892 and that millions of individuals had passed through other ports in earlier times. One of the least known stories in our rich history is that of Castle Garden, the immigration station in Lower Manhattan that processed millions of Europeans, especially Germans and Irish, from 1855-1890. Many visitors mistakenly believe their ancestors came through Ellis, not realizing that it did not open until the late nineteenth century. Phase two of the renovation will tell the story of immigration after 1924, when immigration quotas were tightened, up through the present day influx that is again transforming and enriching our society.

In yesterday’s Times Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation President Stepehen A. Briganti explains that “If we didn’t tell the current story we would be obsolete in 25 years.” This to me seems correct. Ellis Island is a fascinating place that every American should visit if they have the opportunity. Still, it is one tile in the larger mosaic of America’s immigration story. The immigration museum was built in the 1980s and opened in 1990s in the years when the immigrants were in late middle age and were eager to tell their story before they were gone. They succeeded. Now, wisely, the Foundation and Park Service are putting that story into even greater perspective.

Winter is a great time to visit Ellis Island.