Excerpt from City of Dreams by Tyler Anbinder, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

By 1890, however, Castle Garden was no longer large enough to hold the thousands of immigrants who arrived in New York each day. In this era, each transatlantic vessel might hold a thousand passengers or more, and while on average five ships arrived per day, it was not unheard of for ten ships to enter the harbor in a twenty-four-hour period, especially during immigration's "high season" from April to June. Many immigrants remained in Castle Garden overnight or longer, waiting to be met by loved ones and stretching the facility's capacity to the breaking point.

The need to replace Castle Garden increased as the United States began to modify its open-door policy. In 1875 the first immigration restrictions in American history banned the landing of convicts, prostitutes, and Chinese "contract laborers" (those who signed labor agreements before they arrived in the United States and could ascertain the prevailing wages). Seven years later, "idiots," the insane, those likely to become a "public charge," all contract laborers, and all Chinese laborers were added to the list of illegal immigrants. By the time Annie Moore arrived in New York, Congress had also barred paupers, polygamists, and those with "loathsome" or "dangerous contagious diseases" as well. As the restrictions multiplied, federal authorities began to doubt that the state's immigration inspectors were up to the task. Every worker at Castle Garden, from the commissioners of emigration right down to the baggage handlers, had received his job as a favor to some politico. Furthermore, the board of commissioners that ran Castle Garden had become dysfunctional by the late 1880s as a result of feuding within its ranks.

And so it was in April 1890 that Weber, a resident of Buffalo who admitted that he knew nothing about immigrants, took control of immigration policy enforcement at the American port that received more of the newcomers than all the others combined. Immediately he began the search for a new location for the inspection of immigrants, and a month later Ellis Island, then serving as the navy's New York gunpowder storage facility, was selected. It took only eighteen months to triple the size of the island with landfill and construct the proper facilities. Weber soon announced that the Ellis Island immigrant inspection station would open on January 1, 1892. While construction progressed, Weber spent several months crisscrossing eastern Europe to investigate the "immigration problem" at the behest of President Benjamin Harrison.

Just after dawn on New Year's Day, Weber boarded a small ferry at the southern end of Manhattan. Skies were cloudy, the temperature was in the low thirties, and the wind, though light on shore, blew briskly over the water. The launch arrived at Ellis Island around 8:00 a.m., at which point Weber began to scrutinize the hulking new facility one last time to insure that that the inspectors, translators, railroad ticket agents, baggage handlers, commissary workers, doctors, and nurses knew their assignments. The mammoth main building, three stories of Georgia pine measuring 400 feet long and 165 feet wide, with turrets at each corner, could easily accommodate as many as fifteen thousand immigrants per day, Weber assured the press. Around 10:30, when the colonel was satisfied that all the employees as well as invited dignitaries and newspaper reporters were ready, he ordered the flags to be dipped three times, the prearranged signal that the transport carrying the first boatload of immigrants should proceed to Ellis Island.

Excerpted from City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York by Tyler Anbinder. Copyright © 2016 by Tyler Anbinder. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.