Ellis Island | |
| 212.363.3200 | |
| historycente... isisland.org | |
| http://www.ellisisland.org | |
| Hours: Daily 9:30am-5:30pm; Closed Christmas Day | |
| Cost: Free. Audio tour $8 Adults, $7.25 Seniors & Children under 12. | |
| Ages: 4-18 |
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About Ellis Island
Ellis Island is actually a better experience - for older kids - than The Statue of Liberty. Here, at least, there's a lot to do, and lines move more quickly.
The theater shows the award-winning film, "Island of Hope, Island of Tears," which offers a thought-provoking view of what it must have been like to immigrate to America. A live theater production, which explores multicultural immigrant stories from the early 1900s to the present, is offered from March through October.
The Ellis Island Immigration Museum offers exhibits of over 2,000 artifacts, starting with "piles of all their earthly possessions" as you enter through the first floor Baggage Room. Climb to the recently restored Registry Room of the Great Hall, where immigrants were questioned and either allowed into the country or sent packing.
There's a lot to see on the second and third floors, and if you've brought a picnic, the Island is a nice place to rest and eat. Otherwise, the ferry back to Manhattan is only a 10-minute ride, and there are plenty of restaurants in the area behind 85 Broad Street.
The theater shows the award-winning film, "Island of Hope, Island of Tears," which offers a thought-provoking view of what it must have been like to immigrate to America. A live theater production, which explores multicultural immigrant stories from the early 1900s to the present, is offered from March through October.
The Ellis Island Immigration Museum offers exhibits of over 2,000 artifacts, starting with "piles of all their earthly possessions" as you enter through the first floor Baggage Room. Climb to the recently restored Registry Room of the Great Hall, where immigrants were questioned and either allowed into the country or sent packing.
There's a lot to see on the second and third floors, and if you've brought a picnic, the Island is a nice place to rest and eat. Otherwise, the ferry back to Manhattan is only a 10-minute ride, and there are plenty of restaurants in the area behind 85 Broad Street.
Getting There
Take the ferry from Castle Clinton in Battery Park, which stops first at the Statue of Liberty, then continues on to Ellis Island.
Parent Reviews
(2 reviews)
Average Parent Rating: 
Rated by 2 parents
- It's worth doing a little bit of family research before arriving (or ducking outside to make a quick cellphone call to the older family member, as I did) to help lookup records of your family members who came through Ellis Island; 100 million Americans trace at least part of their ancestry through Ellis Island. It helps to know roughly the year your relative arrived, and the name of the foreign town they came from. The library on the ground floor charges $5 for 30 minutes of computer time to search the landing records, and the system for looking up and viewing actual landing manifests from ships is amazingly easy to use (you can also do this in advance on http://www.ellisisland.org). It's thrilling to see the actual handwritten record of a relative's landing at Ellis Island 100 years ago - my 14-year-old had fun doing this. You also can save the search and later retrieve it online to show to other family members, or have a copy of the manifest printed out (for an additional charge).
[Submitted by Mike Kelly4/06/07 - I enjoyed going to Ellis Island with some of my college friends. Make sure you get a tour guide. You'll learn more and become extremely interested. Afterwards, walk around and look at some of the old artifacts that are on the top floor. They were left behind by some of the imagrents who past through Ellis Island. To relax, I went to the first floor. There is a small resteraunt there. Surprisingly, it wasn't crouded which is a bonus. The bathroom was clean, however, the stalls were tiny.
[Submitted by Anonymous12/27/06
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