IMMIGRATION
BUILDING, ELLIS ISLAND, May 31, 1938
Abbott File L-12
Ignoring the Statue of Liberty which she had irreverently photographed from behind in 1931, Abbott crossed New York harbor to Ellis Island and photographed its main immigration building. In 1890, the Island had succeeded Castle Clinton as the city's Emigrant Landing Depot, and in 1900 the building photographed by Abbott replaced structures that had been destroyed by fire two years earlier. Erected at the height of the influx of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe, it was meant to accommodate and impress thousands of daily newcomers. Abbott's close-up of one of the building's four towers conveys its huge bulk and bombastic style.
Quotas and the depression slowed the rate of immigration, and in 1933 only 4,488 immigrants passed through at Ellis Island. In 1954, the Island was closed; it reopened in 1990 as the Ellis Island National Monument, a museum of immigration history.