Battery and old Castle Gardens
(Castle Clinton), Source: Library of
Congress
Castle Garden
Before Ellis Island, there was Castle Garden. Beginning in 1855, New York State used a refitted military armory called Castle Clinton (located at the southernmost point of Manhattan) to process the endless stream of immigrants arriving at the port of New York.
Castle Garden closed in April 1890 after receiving some 8 million immigrants. From 1896 to 1941 it housed the popular New York aquarium. Today it is known as Castle Clinton National Monument.
Before Castle Garden
The Erie Canal's 1825 completion opened up easy travel to the northern United States, thus solidifying New York as the port of choice for U.S.-bound immigrants. But although immigration laws required a passenger list for every ship beginning in the 1820s, New York did not have an immigrant-processing center until 1855.
Before that time, immigrants at New York did not pass through a screening or examination process; they simply declared any required items to customs and headed into America.
Almost half of all Americans have at least one ancestor who
entered the United States through Ellis Island, also known as
"America's Gateway." In Ellis Island, leading family history
author and researcher Loretto Dennis Szucs explains how you
can find out if your relatives were among the millions who were
processed for entry at this historic landmark.
LEARN MORE
Narrated by Mandy Patinkin, this moving program uses hundreds
of interviews from the Ellis Island Oral History Project to
tell the incredible stories of immigration to America. Historians
explore Ellis Island's sometimes insensitive policies. Rare
photographs and films tell the true stories of those who passed
through the "Golden Door."
