Abandoned Ellis Island – And How It Can Be Saved

Via Scouting New York:

The following article was produced in participation with the Partners in Preservation program, which will be awarding $3 million in grants to historic sites across New York City based on your votes – so go vote now!

Chances are, when you think of Ellis Island, you picture just one building…

The “Main Building,” a Beaux-Arts masterpiece built in 1900, through which millions of immigrants passed until its closure in 1954. Today, it houses the Immigration Museum, and if you’ve ever visited on a school field trip, or passed through on a vacation, this is where you spent your day.

One question: while you were there, did you happen to turn around…

…and notice the row of gorgeous Belgian-style buildings across the water? The ones that seem to be totally abandoned?

Full article with numerous photograph here.

Monroe Gallery of Photography is currently exhibiting Stephen Wilkes' "Day To Night" collection.

 

Perhaps Wilkes’ most ambitious project was photographing the south side of Ellis Island (1998 – 2003). With his exclusive photographs and video work, Wilkes was able to help secure $6 million in funding to restore the south side of the island. Today all that remains of the past are Wilkes' haunting images. These photographs have appeared in The New York Times Magazine and have won numerous awards including American Photographer, The Art Directors Club, Applied Arts Magazine, Graphis and other industry awards. Wilkes continues to be involved with his passion for Ellis Island, working with the "Save Ellis Island" foundation. Wilkes received the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for magazine photography, and in 2004 he received the Lucie Award for Fine Art Photographer Of The Year Award. His work is in the permanent collection of several important museum collections. Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom was published by W.W. Norton & Company in the fall of 2006, and was accompanied by a major exhibition at Monroe Gallery of Photography October 6 – January 7, 2007.

STEPHEN WILKES - ELLIS ISLAND: GHOSTS OF FREEDOM

Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom

June 26 through October 10, 2010

Stephen Wilkes: Corridor #9, Ellis Island

Fred Beans Gallery - James A. Michener Art Museum

It's hard to imagine a place that says more about the American experience than Ellis Island. For twelve million people, Ellis Island was the doorway to a new life. The hopes and dreams of several generations of immigrants began and sometimes ended there, and there are few American families who can't trace their heritage back to someone whose first footsteps on American soil happened at Ellis Island. For five years, renowned photographer Stephen Wilkes had free reign of the island's hospital complex. Neglected for nearly fifty years, the buildings were in an extreme state of disrepair: lead paint peeled from the ceilings and walls, vines and trees grew through the floorboards of once cramped wards. In these long-abandoned spaces, Wilkes discovered an unyielding solitude, yet also found undeniable evidence of life, not only in the implicit remembrances of the people who resided there, but in the radiant, beckoning light in which these scenes were captured.

Organized by the Michener Art Museum with the cooperation the George Eastman House, Rochester, and ClampArt Gallery, New York, this exhibition presents a selection of Wilkes's evocative contemporary images of Ellis Island as well as a group of vintage prints from the Eastman House collection by the legendary photographer Lewis Hine (1874-1940), who began documenting the immigrant experience around 1904 and produced a major body of work focusing specifically on Ellis Island.

View the full collection of Stephen Wilkes' Ellis Island photographs here.



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