Harlan D. Unrau, Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty National Monument, New York-New Jersey (Denver: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, National Park Service, 1984), XIX.
“New Immigrant Station,” New York Times, December 3, 1900.
For instance, in 1912, The Popular Science Monthly published an article titled “The Medical side of Immigration.” The article, written on pseudo-medical evidence, describes how some immigrant races are more desirable than others from a medical point of view, taking as example some of the immigrants arriving to Ellis Island: “According to the law, the feeble-minded, as well as idiots and imbeciles, are absolutely excluded. It is of vast import that the feeble-minded be detected, not alone because they are predisposed to become public charges, but because they and their offspring contribute so largely to the criminal element.” (389) It continues, “In general, it may be said that the best class is drawn from northern and western Europe and the poorest from the Mediterranean countries and western Asia. Among the worst are the Greeks, South Italians, and the Syrians, who emigrate in large numbers. The Greeks offer a sad contrast to their ancient progenitors, as poor physical development is the rule among those who reach Ellis Island, and they have above their share of other defects.” (390) On European immigration into the US and whiteness, see: David R. Roediger, “New Immigrants, Race, and ‘Ethnicity’ in the Long Early Twentieth Century,” in Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs (New York: Basic Books, 2018).
On Ellis Island and the industrialized inspection process, see: Jay Dolmage, “Ellis Island and the Inventions of Race and Disability,” in Disabled upon Arrival: Eugenics, Immigration, and the Construction of Race and Disability (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2018), 14.
Unrau, Ellis Island, 3.
Ibid., 35.
On the American peak of immigration, see: Alan M. Kraut, Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the “Immigrant Menace” (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 4.
“New Immigrant Station.”
“New Immigrant Station” elaborates: “The plans and specifications for the new structure were selected from the designs submitted by the architectural firm of Boring & Tilton of this city…The style is a conglomeration of several styles of architecture, the predominating style being that of the French Renaissance. The material used in the construction is brick, with light stone trimmings, harmonized so as to make the general effect as attractive in appearance as possible…But the interior arrangements are what, after all, make the station a model of completeness. Every detail of the exacting and confusing service to which its uses are to be dedicated were considered in perfecting the interior plans. The transportation, examining, medical, inquiry, and various other departments of the service being assigned quarters that, while they are practically separate in every detail, yet are so arranged as to follow one after the other, according to its proper place in the department…Every inch of space on this floor is utilized. The railings forming the network of the aisles, in which the immigrants are placed in alphabetical order, according to nationality, gives the great amphitheatre the appearance of an immense spider web…Surrounding this room, from the third floor, is the observation gallery, where visitors can watch the Inspectors at work…One of the greatest of the improvements will be the. bathing house, where 200 immigrants can be bathed at a time, 8,000 being about the number that can be thus refreshed during an ordinary day. ‘We expect to wash them once a day, and they will land on American soil clean, if nothing more,’’ said Assistant Commissioner McSweeney a few days ago…The floors are of concrete and slate, the railings. of iron, while the beds are combinations of iron and wire netting…The spending of the million and a half dollars by the Government on Ellis Island will be, according to those best fitted to judge, the beginning of a new era in the complicated system of the immigration service.”
On first-class tickets, and immigrant regulation, see: Unrau, Ellis Island, 226. Specifically: “Notice Concerning Sale of First Class Transportation to Immigrants at Ellis Island,” November 24, 1911, William Williams, Commissioner, Taft Papers, Library of Congress.
Already, the architecture of the Island facilitated the medical examinations (indeed, in 1911, the Unites States Health Service published a diagram for the trachoma checks, that literally translated them into a floorplan). The Trachoma protocol outside the Immigration Building at Ellis Island was introduced in 1911, after some structural reforms in the building. Previously this check was performed indoors, at the Great Hall.
Howard Markel, When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America and the Fears They Have Unleashed (New York: Vintage Books, 2005), 83.
Interestingly, there is a clear circulation connection in plan (see images) between the holding medical examination rooms, the detection center, and the exit to the quarantine and infectious disease hospital on the other side of the Island.
Kraut, Silent Travelers.
On the origin-related differences in inspection procedures at Ellis Island, see: Alison Bateman-House, “Medical Examination of Immigrants at Ellis Island,” AMA Journal of Ethics 10, no. 4 (April 1, 2008): 235–41.
Markel, When Germs Travel, 83.
David Roediger has written how these populations were perceived as separate ethnic groups not belonging to the "white America", and were later whitened in the United States. See Roediger, “New Immigrants, Race, and ‘Ethnicity,’” in Working Toward Whiteness.
See: Lorie Conway, Forgotten Ellis Island: The Extraordinary Story of America’s Immigrant Hospital (New York: Smithsonian Books /Collins, 2007); The United States Public Health Service, Book of Instructions for the Medical Inspection of Immigrants (G.P.O., 1903).
This preliminary inspection, from what can be deducted from the photographs, was performed at the same time and in the same space for both men and women, segregated in groups by nationalities. However, those with calk-marks were detained in holding areas and separated by the suspected medical affection and by gender.
Conway, Forgotten Ellis Island, 34.
As Allan M. Kraut describes, in many cases, the payment of the hospitalization was covered by immigrants’ societies based on nationalities or ethnic groups. Kraut, Silent Travelers, 56.
Within the eugenics rhetoric, the categories of race and physical and mental disabilities were created in service of racism. See Dolmage, “Ellis Island,” Disabled upon Arrival, 23.
During the first half of the 20th century, there are several archives examples of deportation at Ellis Island of Immigrants qualified by the Medical Inspectors at Ellis Island as “Likely to become a public charge.” One archived document report shows the interview and findings for the status of Giuseppe Giorni, a 27-year old male immigrant from Italy. The inquiry determined Giorni was to be deported because of his varicose veins which would lead to him likely becoming a public charge. See: “Report of a Special Inquiry Held at Ellis Island Regarding the Deportation of Italian Immigrants, 6/5/1915,” European War—German Refugees—Deportation of Italians—Alien Deportations, Subject and Policy Files 1906–1957, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service 1787–2004, National Archives, Washington, D.C. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/12013855
The topics of the eugenics nation and the design implications exceed the scope of this essay, but open an exciting research possibility, already developed in: Alexandra Minna Stern, Eugenic Nation : Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Howard Markel and Alexandra Minna Stern, “Which Face? Whose Nation?: Immigration, Public Health, and the Construction of Disease at America’s Ports and Borders, 1891–1928,” American Behavioral Scientist 42, no. 9 (June 1, 1999): 1314–31.
Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended: Lecture Series at the Collège de France, 1975–76, eds. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana, trans. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003).
Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 61.
Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” trans. Libby Meintjes, Public Culture 15, no. 1 (2003): 11–40.
See Michel Foucault, “Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977–78,” Choice Reviews Online 45, no. 4 (December 1, 2007): 45–1971.
US Public Health Service, Book of Instructions.