11 Most Endangered

Ellis Island National Monument

Year Listed: 1992
Location: , New York
Current Status: Favorable
Threat: Deterioration, Neglect

Latest News

The preservation of this 11 Most site was supported by Save America's Treasures, a program that is facing elimination in the proposed federal budget. Join our campaign to save this component of preservation funding, which has restored 1,100 structures and collections and created 16,000 jobs coast to coast.

Fifteen years after the museum's opening, more than 30 buildings on Ellis Island await restoration.

Credit: Larry Racioppo, Save Ellis Island

Significance

The beautifully restored Main Building of Ellis Island opened with great fanfare in 1990 and other buildings on the island's north side have been restored as part of the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, thanks to a successful partnership between the National Park Service and the Statue of Liberty - Ellis Island Foundation. However, the job of restoring the Ellis Island National Monument was not done. On the south side, behind chain-link fences, dozens of important historic buildings -- like hospitals and quarantine areas -- that help tell the entire story of Ellis Island are crumbling from decay and a lack of maintenance. Because many of Ellis Island's buildings have remained vacant for nearly half a century, the damage to the structures is monumental. Weather has taken a toll, and vegetation overrunning the buildings hastens their decline.

Updates

As of September 2008, all 29 of the south side buildings have been stabilized. (Stabilization of the north side's Baggage and Dormitory Building began in 2005.) The restoration work will be completed in stages. The Ferry Building, a 1934 PWA project in the Art Deco style, has been restored already at a cost of $6 million. It was reopened to the public in April 2007, becoming the first building on the New Jersey portion of Ellis Island to be available for public use in more than half a centuryThe Ferry Building was used as a lunch room for immigrants, a waiting room for the departure ferries and a U.S. Customs Office. It had been vacant since 1954. Lowe's Charitable and Educational Foundation and the National Trust for Historic Preservation awarded a $100,000 grant in 2007 toward the Ferry Building's rehabilitation. Work continues on other structures. Major progress has been made on the Laundry and Hospital Outbuilding. (This project and the Ferry Building project were funded by two Save America's Treasures grants and matching funds from private sources and the state of New Jersey.) Save Ellis Island's next major goal is the restoration of the corridor leading from the Ferry Building to the Laundry and Hospital Outbuilding and hospital lawn. When this is completed, Save Ellis Island will be able to offer limited guided tours of the south side.

In October of 1997 the New York Landmarks Conservancy, with $50,000 in funds and in-kind services, demonstrated that the south side of the island could be saved with limited funds. Money has been received from the Save America's Treasures fund in the amount of $500,000 to restore the roof and masonry, and to replace windows and doors at the Laundry and Hospital Outbuilding on the south side of the island. In addition to this SAT Grant, $1,145,975 was granted to stabilize and restore the Ferry Building. The National Park Service, in partnership with the United States Congress and the State of New Jersey, released funds for the project in February 2003. These funds, in the amount of $8.6 million, have helped to stabilize the building and to create an endowment. Subsequently, the NPS has completed a building stabilization project, such that now all the vacant buildings on the south side are dried out and protected from the elements. With labor from the NJ state prisons, the invasive vegetation which had overgrown the buildings has now been cleared.

The Save Ellis Island Foundation was created in 2000 in response to The New Jersey Governor's Advisory Committee on the Preservation and Use of Ellis Island, two years after former Governor Christie Todd Whitman convened the Committee. The Foundation's Board of Directors, comprised of diverse leaders from the private and public sectors, has established an effective partnership with the National Park Service to raise awareness and support for the need to complete the restoration and reuse of Ellis Island. To date, $26 million has been made available through public funds and private donations to stabilize and restore Ellis Island's remaining buildings. The Save Ellis Island Foundation is a completely separate organization with distinctly different purposes from the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc. (SOLEIF), another non-profit partner of the National Park Service at Ellis Island. The Save Ellis Island Foundation has worked closely with the NPS to prepare a Development Concept Plan for the Island's future. Visit the Save Ellis Island Foundation's Web site (linked above) for more information.