Exploring Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty - With Justin Southern

[00:00:00] Speaker A: This episode of the New Yorkers podcast is brought to you by newyork100.org recognizing excellence across New York City's five boroughs. Hello everyone and welcome to the New Yorkers, a podcast by New York City Cop. I'm your host, Kelly Kopp, published photographer, New York City tour business owner, real estate content creator, podcaster, and above all else, a New Yorker. [00:00:22] Speaker B: Ladies and gentlemen, the next Brooklyn bound train in Mount Island. [00:00:28] Speaker A: Stand clear of the closing doors. [00:00:56] Speaker B: Shovel to grab the central foreign. [00:01:04] Speaker A: Welcome back to the New Yorkers podcast, my friends. Today I am joined by my friend Justin Southern who leads the incredible Hard hat tours at Ellis Island. He has a wealth of knowledge about immigration, NYC history, and the untold stories of the iconic landmark at Ellis Island. Dustin, thanks for being here, my friend. How are you today? [00:01:23] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm doing well. [00:01:26] Speaker A: Yeah, it's an honor to have you here. You know, I spent, you guys, I spent, it was about a week or two ago, spent an afternoon with Justin. [00:01:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:01:33] Speaker A: Out at Ellis Island. We had a great time. It's a great day. So tell us about yourself. I want the audience to get to know you a little. [00:01:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I am. Originally, I'm from Alabama. I've lived in New York for about six years, but I have lived in several places including in Texas for a little while in Philadelphia. I lived abroad in Rome where I led tours. [00:01:57] Speaker A: Wow. [00:01:57] Speaker B: For a few years. [00:01:58] Speaker A: What brought you to Rome? [00:02:00] Speaker B: I did a study abroad program in Rome and then after I graduated decided I wanted to spend a year abroad learning Italian and teaching English. I was a very terrible English teacher, but I did find, I did find him. Find my way into the tour. [00:02:16] Speaker A: That's hilarious. How can you be a bad English teacher if you speak such straight English? [00:02:21] Speaker B: You don't have to. I don't even know how to answer that. I made a lady cry in my first 15 minutes of my very first lesson. [00:02:28] Speaker A: Really? [00:02:30] Speaker B: I tell the story a lot, but I'd been told that she was. I don't know how much this is relevant to the sample asylum. I'm just gonna run with it. Yeah, but she. I got a job for a school and I was going to different banks and telecommunication companies and doing private lessons with different executive staff members. And this first lesson that I had, I'd been off the plane for three, four days. I was still jet lagged. And I went in, I had developed a very comprehensive lesson plan. Trying to do an hour and a half long lesson on the eight parts of speech because I thought she had Studied English before. [00:03:08] Speaker A: Right. [00:03:08] Speaker B: It turns out she was a very much a beginner. And as I go through each of these eight parts of speech, I was. I mean, I'm sweating. Sweating, you know? Yeah, sweating bullets here. And she eventually she kept nodding. I said, are you. Have you learned this before? You know this? And she's saying, see, see, see? And eventually she got. I got through all eight parts of the speech and started in like 15 minutes. I got through all eight parts of speech in 15 minutes. And I started panicking, thinking, what am I supposed to do now? And so I improvised and started talking about non quantifiable versus quantifiable nouns. [00:03:47] Speaker A: Nice. [00:03:47] Speaker B: Yeah. If you don't know, that's the first. [00:03:50] Speaker A: Thing I would go to too. [00:03:51] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I don't know why that popped into my head, but there I was so nervous. I was 23 years old. And the difference, if you don't know, is like water is a non quantifiable noun. You can't count water, but bottles of water you can count. It's a quantifiable noun. So I started talking about that and she stopped me. She said, that's petta. It means wait. And she went and got this big dictionary, this Italian English dictionary, and set it in front of me and opened it up to a page and she pointed at a word and she said, I am. And it was. The word was demoralized. And then she started crying and we had a nice little heart to heart. I explained in my little pitchkin Italian that I, you know, I couldn't really even order a cappuccino without problems. And so. [00:04:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I was actually going to say, you know what? I was gonna say, you know what? After the show. Can you tell me what quantifiable and not quantifold, actually. Really, I'm glad. [00:04:50] Speaker B: I'm glad we got that one out of the way. [00:04:52] Speaker A: That's interesting. Well, that's a nice start to do the podcast, you know. Yeah, we're getting to know you pretty well. [00:04:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:04:59] Speaker A: So tell us how now you come back to the United States or how do you want to go from here? [00:05:04] Speaker B: Well, I mean, I came back to the United States. I, like I said, I moved around a little bit before finally settling here right before the pandemic. And I have given tours here in New York. I've given tours in Philly, obviously, Rome. I've done some small private tours in Florence. So I. [00:05:22] Speaker A: How did you get into touring? [00:05:24] Speaker B: When I was in Rome, I was pretty much broke because I couldn't get Much work as a quantifiable. As an English teacher. [00:05:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:31] Speaker B: I was quantifiably broken. And I responded to an ad on one of the job boards and got a job with one of the cultural associations there. And so I started giving tours and. Yeah, just the rest is history, I guess. [00:05:48] Speaker A: Nice. [00:05:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So. [00:05:51] Speaker A: So then you moved to New York City. [00:05:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:05:53] Speaker A: And then what? [00:05:55] Speaker B: Well, I worked in the tech industry for a long time before kind of finding my way back into what I'd say is more my passion, which is history, storytelling, understanding the importance of preserving these symbols of our past and relaying that to a broad audience. So there was a lot of. When I found my way over to save Ellis island, it was. I don't know, it was like a light bulb going off and finally feeling at home. [00:06:25] Speaker A: Right. [00:06:25] Speaker B: For once, I could tell when, you. [00:06:28] Speaker A: Know, you took me on the tour, and it was fascinating. And, you know, I was. Felt like I was walking with a friend, which I feel I am now. And, gosh, the information was incredible. So I can't wait for you to talk about it. [00:06:39] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, for me going over there, I don't have a personal history involving Ellis Island. You know, there were at its peak, they said 12, up to 12 million people who passed through there, and. Incredible. Yeah. As a result, about 40% of the US population has some ancestor who passed through there. [00:06:57] Speaker A: Right. [00:06:58] Speaker B: I feel like, you know, I'm not quite in the minority, but I am one of those people who. I didn't have any. I didn't have any ancestors go through there. My father's family, he's traced it all the way back to 1709 was the earliest ancestors that we have from Europe. And there might. They might have even come in earlier. That's just the earliest record we have. And they settled mostly in the south in Virginia, Alabama, West Virginia, the Appalachians. [00:07:30] Speaker A: And I'm interested. [00:07:32] Speaker B: My mom's family's Swedish, primarily, and they all migrated west and settled in Utah. They're all very Mormon. And so I think a lot of my ancestry kind of culminates in just a very American journey, though I don't have a personal connection to Ellis island in terms of my family history. I think that all of us have some sort of a story or a background that think Ellis island is kind of emblematic of. [00:08:07] Speaker A: Right, right. Do you know what year did Ellis island open? When did this all start? [00:08:12] Speaker B: Ellis island opened as the federal immigration station on January 1st of 1892. [00:08:19] Speaker A: Wow. [00:08:20] Speaker B: Prior to that, the immigration had been left up to the states. It Wasn't. Wasn't controlled by the federal government. And within New York there was. Castle Garden had been the primary immigration way station for many, many years. And the government realized that they needed to have federal standards for how immigration was happening to control how they're coming into the country, who's coming into the country, etc. [00:08:55] Speaker A: So what's interesting to me is to think that word spread around the world to come here to the US For a. For a better life. I think that's fascinating. And everybody from every corner of the world wanted to come here. [00:09:10] Speaker B: So, I mean, immigration had been happening in the United States, for instance, before it was the United States. [00:09:16] Speaker A: Right. [00:09:17] Speaker B: We had the Dutch colonies, obviously, New York was New Amsterdam originally. [00:09:21] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:09:22] Speaker B: The English colony of Jamestown. The French had come up to the mostly Canadian region, and the Spanish had settled much of Latin America. So we had immigration happening from an early stage. And the. But, you know, immigration at that time was very slow. Like, there wasn't a lot of industry here at the time. There wasn't a lot of a draw here. This was still kind of considered for a long time, a bit of a backwater. [00:09:59] Speaker A: Oh, really? [00:10:00] Speaker B: Yeah. 1700s, obviously, things accelerated a little bit, but really, we start getting the massive waves and waves of immigrants in the 1800s. And there's a lot of reasons for that. There is the foundation of us as a. As a country. [00:10:19] Speaker A: Right. [00:10:20] Speaker B: But I'd say a bigger reason is how much easier the journey became. [00:10:26] Speaker A: Right. [00:10:26] Speaker B: As we get steam ships and we get. [00:10:29] Speaker A: Become more modernized, you know. Yeah, yeah. [00:10:33] Speaker B: What a journey that had taken months before can now be accomplished in a matter of a couple of weeks. Yeah. But immigration wasn't really something that. I don't know if it was on a lot of people's minds until the 1840s and 1850s. Yeah. So through the 1800s, we start to see massive waves of immigrants coming. I think most famously the Irish coming during the Irish potato famine. [00:11:00] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:01] Speaker B: But we were getting immigrants from. In Germany, England, all over, really. A lot of Scandinavian immigrants. As I mentioned, my. Some of my family was. [00:11:14] Speaker A: I think mine is too. I got to talk to my parents and ask them what. What my heritage is, what my history is, because I. I think my parents have talked about it. I should know more about it, but go ahead. [00:11:24] Speaker B: And that's when we start to get, like, this real strong nativist movement of people who really want to insulate America from these waves of immigrants. At the same time, like, there's a lot of opportunists who are taking advantage of these you know, people coming in waves off these ships and really. Yeah, they're robbing them. [00:11:49] Speaker A: Geez. [00:11:50] Speaker B: Yeah, there was a. There was no real standardized process for them coming here. They were just getting off the ship. And. And so there was a lot of need to start building regulations around how immigrants came here. So 1882 was the passage of the Immigration act, the first federal immigration law, which started charging a head tax on non citizen arrivals. And it started to excluding certain classes like criminals and quote, unquote, idiots. There's a lot to be said there. But yeah, it wasn't until 1891, the Immigration act of 1891, where federal enforcement mechanisms came and we started to sort of centralize the inspection of immigrants. And so that's why that leads us to Ellis Island. They needed a nice. They needed a place where they could quarantine the immigrants. Where they could quarantine, not just in a health sense, but to go through the process of inspection and processing. So. [00:13:07] Speaker A: And do you know how many now. So now we're at the island where they're formerly. Correct. Immigrating into the United States. Um, how many was it? How many a day or any numbers? Do you know that? I. Obviously I don't. I'm curious what, how that worked. [00:13:23] Speaker B: Yeah, the peak day was. Or the, the peak year for immigration was 1907. The peak day they said there was almost 12,000 people that came through the island. Overall, over a million people came through in 1907. [00:13:41] Speaker A: Wow. [00:13:42] Speaker B: And yeah, 1908, I think over a million people. So it was pretty busy. And so. [00:13:50] Speaker A: Wow. What's the, what's the process? [00:13:53] Speaker B: So the process at the time. So when these ships are coming over from Europe, they are bringing a wide range of people. They're bringing Polish immigrants, Russian Jews, people from the Balkan states, there are people from Greece, you name it. [00:14:18] Speaker A: You know what? I haven't thought of the immigration process to leave Europe or leave wherever in the world they're coming from. There's got to be a whole process too, right? Or anybody can come. Like, do you know how that works? Or. I know I'm asking a lot of questions. [00:14:31] Speaker B: No, that's fine. [00:14:32] Speaker A: I think it's fascinating. [00:14:33] Speaker B: We will probably get to that. In 1924, the Johnson Reed act is passed. And that is going to basically shift the onus over to the consulates, the foreign consulates processing immigrants and, you know, issuing visas. And so we do have a little bit of a period where prior to the Johnson reed Act in 1924, most of the immigrants were getting processed on Ellis island, not all of them. There were some happening on angel island and outside of San Francisco, they were happening in New Orleans. There was a few points of entry, but Ellis island was definitely the largest. Now, you asked about what kind of processing was happening on the European side. [00:15:21] Speaker A: Right. [00:15:22] Speaker B: So the steamships were responsible for anybody who was going to be rejected. So what that means is if they brought some passenger over who was going to notice who was not going to pass inspection, they were responsible for bringing that person back to their original port. So there was a financial component to it, an incentive to make sure that they were bringing only people they thought could pass inspection. And this is why only 2% of the arriving immigrants were ultimately excluded. So these steamships, as they came across, they're bringing, as I said, they're bringing a wide mixture of people from a number of backgrounds. The class structure was divided up so that there were first and second class passengers who didn't have to get processed on Ellis Island. They would be medically inspected on the ship, and they would be dropped off in the Battery before ferries took the rest of the passengers to Ellis Island. [00:16:28] Speaker A: Wow. [00:16:29] Speaker B: The steerage passengers were the huddled masses, so to speak, who were in the bottom of the ship and really want to paint a picture of what that journey must have been like because you have political refugees, you have people who are fleeing for economic reasons, who are fleeing famine, who are fleeing whatever number of reasons, and many of them have maybe a relative over here already who's sponsored their journey. They may not even have any money. A lot of these people arriving had nothing but the clothes on their back. They were spending weeks sometimes getting even to the port. They're inspected at their port of departure. They are crammed into these, the steerage section of the ship. There's, yeah, there's very minimal, you know, venting in there. Air, air circulation, no sunshine. There's, you know, hundreds of people crammed into these bases. The stink must have been horrible. [00:17:38] Speaker A: You know, I don't. You know, I'm not. This isn't really a good reference, but a lot of people learned about this visual that you're painting a picture of from the movie Titanic, you know, because we saw the different classes of people, different levels and where they stayed, you know, so, yeah, absolutely. What you're talking about. [00:17:55] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So these people living, living down there, there's rats. It must have stunk of human. You know, you've ever been in a crowded subway platform, thinking, imagining that for weeks on end, they're given a tin plate, a fork, and A spoon. And they're fed soup and a little bit of bread every day. And you know that many of them don't speak English. I'd say most of them don't speak English. They're bringing their whole families over here. They. A lot of people are getting sick. [00:18:32] Speaker A: I was gonna say illness. [00:18:33] Speaker B: Yeah, they're getting sick on the ships. They're malnourished by the time they get here because they haven't really had a solid meal. [00:18:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:42] Speaker B: And they arrive and the very first thing that they get is a, you know, a quick six second medical inspection as they're, you know, before they're going up to be processed. [00:18:56] Speaker A: And it's a very minimal. Right. Medical inspection. So it's either you stay here or go. In a sense. Right? [00:19:03] Speaker B: Yeah, they. They were. Well, there's two. Two tiers to the inspection. Everybody's getting the six second. The quote, unquote, six second inspection. I don't know if every inspection lasted exactly six seconds, but they would come and inspect you for a number of illnesses they knew about. Like, one of them, famously, is trachoma. And that is a. That's a disease that affects your eyes. And so the inspectors had these little button hooks, they were called, these little hooks that they would stick under everyone's eyelid and peel it back to see if there was any evidence of trachoma in their eyelids. And they were using the same bucket. [00:19:45] Speaker A: Hook for every single immigrant, which is probably spreading this. [00:19:48] Speaker B: Yeah, it's probably not doing a great job at containing it. And they were checking them for any, you know, obvious mental deficiencies. If there was heart conditions, there was inspectors. They were standing at the top of. [00:20:02] Speaker A: A stair staircase in six seconds. [00:20:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And they were watching people who were coming up the stairs to see if they had any potential heart conditions. The people that we wanted coming into the country were workers. We wanted people to come in and who could support themselves, who could fuel this industrial revolution that we were undergoing. You know, who could go and work in these steel mills, who could work in coal. Coal mines and meatpacking industry and the textile mills. You know, we had. We're undergoing a rapid, rapid expansion and industrialization at the time. And this cheap, uneducated labor force was really one of the things that helped fuel that. So they wanted to make sure that any. Anybody coming in wasn't going to be a public charge, quote, unquote, which is going to be anybody who, you know, requires charity or assistance. They wanted to make sure there wasn't anybody who was mentally unfit or unhealthy and so they were screening for a lot of these things up front. And they were making marks on each individual's coat with chalk to indicate if they thought that they had one of these, any kind of afflictions. So this was the first processing. [00:21:19] Speaker A: And so, so, okay, so, and I'm thinking this group that's deemed healthy, so to speak, goes here. But then the people who are not deemed healthy go here. Yeah, correct. [00:21:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:33] Speaker A: But, you know, I want to say something real, real quick too. I mean, how amazing must it have been? Because right before, I mean, you can tell me if I'm wrong here, if like the journey. But as they're coming into New York harbor or whatever, they see the Statue of Liberty first. Right. So they're passing by the Statue of Liberty and I mean, two seconds away, right there is Ellis island. And what a just a must have been an over overwhelmed with emotions to see, here they are at this, the greatest land in the world, you know, come into the United States and they see the beautiful Statue of Liberty welcoming them in. And then they come here and then they get off the boat and then, hey, you're not healthy. What happens? That's gotta be terrible. [00:22:17] Speaker B: After all those weeks at sea, after all these probably months and maybe even years of, you know, preparing for this journey. [00:22:24] Speaker A: Right. [00:22:25] Speaker B: After trying to get your family the tickets for passage and going through everything, seeing the Statue of Liberty, that moment of hope, Lady Liberty with radiating her crown with her torch. What, I mean, what a powerful symbol to be welcomed, greeted to America with, and then to be shuttled over to the island and have your child taken away from you because your child may have had measles. [00:22:56] Speaker A: And where do they go? What do they do? [00:22:59] Speaker B: So a little of the history of the island itself. Before it had been the immigration station. It was really just a, you know, the harbor was littered with tiny little islands. And this is just one of many. The island had at some point in where they hung pirates, and later there had been a battery built on it during the War of 1812, which was never used. At some point there was a tavern built on the island. [00:23:32] Speaker A: Oh, I didn't know that. [00:23:33] Speaker B: Which was a very inconvenient place for a tavern. [00:23:35] Speaker A: I was going to say. I was going to say let's stop by the tavern. Yeah. [00:23:38] Speaker B: On your way home from work. [00:23:39] Speaker A: You know, just a rowboat or something. Yeah, yeah. [00:23:42] Speaker B: But there was a lot of fishermen out there, and so that was probably the one place they could go to get a quick meal in the 1890s. Is when. When the immigration station first opened. But the island was still pretty small at the time. It was only about 3.3 acres. And as the needs grew, the island grew. It would eventually be expanded to about 27 and a half acres. Wow. And so we see, like, there were three islands originally that were eventually connected. And as it grew, there was a need to build this hospital. The first hospital was built. [00:24:22] Speaker A: So there's three buildings. Correct. [00:24:25] Speaker B: So there's three islands. And on the South Islands, Island 2 and Island 3, as we call them, where the hospitals are, there are 29 buildings total. [00:24:37] Speaker A: Wow. [00:24:38] Speaker B: Yeah, A lot of those were eventually connected by a long hallway, a long corridor. But we have. [00:24:45] Speaker A: That's what I saw. Correct. Yeah, that's what we went into on the Hardhat tour. [00:24:48] Speaker B: Yeah, on the Hard Hat tour. [00:24:49] Speaker A: Yeah. We'll talk about shortly. Go ahead. [00:24:51] Speaker B: So there was the General Hospital, which is built for anybody who had, you know, a non contagious disease. It could have been anything. It could have been a broken arm, it could have been they had a sore throat, you know. [00:25:05] Speaker A: Right. [00:25:05] Speaker B: There were a lot of pregnant women who came over and had their children born on the island. They wanted to make sure that any children being born here were being born in a healthy environment before, you know, they embarked on their journeys across the country to wherever their final destination was. [00:25:26] Speaker A: Right. [00:25:28] Speaker B: And there were 350 babies born on the island. The. [00:25:34] Speaker A: Do you know their names? [00:25:35] Speaker B: Yeah, go ahead. So the General hospital eventually housed 350 beds. The. The southernmost island, Island 3, had the contagious disease ward built. That's where you went if you had measles, if you had typhus, if you had trachoma, if you had any of these really dangerous diseases. [00:25:59] Speaker A: And this is where you showed me on the tour. Right. It was fascinating. Yeah. [00:26:04] Speaker B: The buildings have. They've been abandoned since the 1950s, but SA Villis island has been working to restore those buildings. And we do that through two primary fundraising efforts. One is through private donations, independent donations, and the other is through our Hardhat tour, where we take people through these 29 hospital buildings and. Well, not all 29 of them. And I think, I mean, you were there. It's a very powerful place. [00:26:36] Speaker A: It is to visit. [00:26:37] Speaker B: I mean, just knowing these immigrant stories, knowing what kind of journeys people went. [00:26:42] Speaker A: Through to get here, to be standing where they were standing and envision yourself in their shoes and what they went through. Yeah, powerful. [00:26:49] Speaker B: Like we went down to the. The hospice ward at the very end of the. Of the complex and the morgue. [00:26:59] Speaker A: Is that what the Morgue area, too. Is that close? [00:27:03] Speaker B: The morgue is on the opposite end, but the hospice end has the best view of the Statue of Liberty. And that's what I think about a lot, is these people who are dying of tuberculosis, they don't speak the language. Their nurses don't speak their language, their bedside companions. The other people who are in there probably don't speak their language. And it must have been a really scary, you know, a scary journey for them. Scary for any of them. There's a lot of children who wound up in, like, you know, the measles wards by themselves. [00:27:41] Speaker A: Correct. [00:27:41] Speaker B: Like, no family members pulled away from their families. [00:27:44] Speaker A: So from what I understood when we were talking, so. So if they're, you know, if they're approved, you know, if they pass the inspection, I should say, then they're on their own. They. They go to the mainland, so to speak. Right to Manhattan or wherever. But if you're not healthy, not deemed healthy, you stay on Ellis Island. [00:28:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:02] Speaker A: So you're separated from your family, children, like you said earlier, and your parents, and. Gosh, it had to just be horrific. [00:28:09] Speaker B: Yeah. There was records of people who were there for over a year. [00:28:14] Speaker A: I was just gonna ask you if people. How. How long people have stayed there. [00:28:18] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it could be anywhere from, you know, a few days to over a year that people were on the island and. [00:28:25] Speaker A: But it'd be. It's terrible to think that. Or sad to think that families had to leave a family member behind, be it a mother, father, child, and one of them passed away and. [00:28:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it's. It's. It feels like it's ancient history because. But it's not ancient history. There. There are people whose. People alive today, whose parents were in the hospital, and there were people. We have audio recordings of children who stayed there as adults telling the stories of their life there and how confusing it was to be pulled away from their mother and their father and their siblings, put into a room where they didn't know anybody. They didn't know what was going on. A lot of them are from rural communities. They've not seen medical devices the way that these are. There's stories of people being terrified of the X ray machine and not knowing what the X. What an X ray was. [00:29:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:29:29] Speaker B: Which makes sense, right? Yeah. And so it was really scary. But the. A lot of these stories talk about the. The relationships that they were able to build with the nurses and the doctors there. And so the stories of the nurses is, I think, one of the most important Pieces of this, and we do forget about that. There was a lot of nurses who lived on the island. They lived there six days a week. A lot of the babies that were born there were named after the nurses or the doctors who cared for them. There are stories of the nurses after leaving the island, you know, becoming very close friends with the patients who they'd had in their wards under their care and remaining lifelong friends with them. And so I think it shows a lot of humanity. And, yeah, I think that there's. If I could write some kind of HBO drama, it would be like a show about, you know, the lives of the doctors and nurses and the patients. [00:30:35] Speaker A: That'd be an amazing show, too. Yeah. Julie. You know, it's the history of immigrants, the history of what they went through here at Ellis island and what they saw. And gosh. [00:30:45] Speaker B: Yeah, everybody loves a hospital show. [00:30:46] Speaker A: Right? You know, and I. You know, I think the Hard Hat tour was. Is really important for people to see because you do learn about the history and the journey of our. Of those people, you know, who made that difficult decision and that difficult journey here. And that's because now we're here today because of them. This. This beautiful city that's built upon immigrants. [00:31:11] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:31:12] Speaker A: You know. [00:31:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And I'm in a beautiful country. Built. [00:31:16] Speaker A: That's what I meant, too. I'm sorry. I said. [00:31:18] Speaker B: No, I mean, it is a beautiful city, and it is built. [00:31:21] Speaker A: I did mean that. I meant to say country, but, you know, we're in New York, so it's about New York. So I always. I said New York City and United States. [00:31:28] Speaker B: It is called the New Yorkers Podcast. [00:31:30] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Yeah. You know, I didn't know this. So you. You pull up on the ferry. So first of all, you take the. This. What's the name of it? The Statue. What's the name of the ferry? [00:31:40] Speaker B: Oh, the Statue City Cruises Ferry. [00:31:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Statue City Cruise is from, you know, right there by the. Right by. There by the Staten Island Ferry. That's how close it is. And they just zip over. [00:31:50] Speaker B: Yeah, Right there in the Battery by. By Castle Garden. [00:31:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Super easy to get here. [00:31:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:31:55] Speaker A: And. Or get there, I should say. But so when I got there and when I met you. So what is it? The three different sections, Is that correct? Go ahead again, because I can refresh my memory on that. [00:32:05] Speaker B: The three islands. [00:32:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:32:08] Speaker B: So there were three islands. The first island where the majority of the immigrants were processed is where the Immigration Museum is today. [00:32:17] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:32:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And then there's the connecting Island 1 with Island 2 is where the ferry house was, and that was where most people were departing after getting approved and getting everything, all of their paperwork settled. And. And then they would head off to the train depots in Hoboken or they would go into Manhattan or, you know, there was a lot of directions and pathways. People were going from there. Then if they had. If they had failed the medical inspection, they would keep going down that hallway into Island 2, where there's the general hospital, and they were getting a more detailed inspection as they were deemed mentally deficient. As I said, there was a mental hospital on the island, or it was just a generic. We need to treat you for, you know, a common cold or we want to keep you for a few days because you have, you know, we're not sure what's wrong with you or if we can identify this person has tuberculosis. We need. [00:33:19] Speaker A: Interesting, too, as we talked about, what was deemed as a mental illness back then is not. Not today, you know, which is sad to think about, you know, with something that is, you know, not truly not a mental illness. And back then they didn't know certain things. And it's sad to think about. Go ahead. [00:33:35] Speaker B: And, you know, there would be a later on, like, certain or classist ways of screening the immigrants, literacy tests and trying to check if they could solve certain types of puzzles. There's a really fun story, a little anecdote, about this girl who was asked the best way to sweep the stairs. I think that was a question. It's like, wow, should you be sweeping the stairs like this or like this? And her response was, I didn't come to America to sweep stairs. [00:34:12] Speaker A: They're like, you passed. [00:34:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:34:14] Speaker A: That's funny. [00:34:15] Speaker B: Yeah. So they were, you know, trying to. Trying to screen immigrants according to these certain criteria. Health, wealth. [00:34:25] Speaker A: Right. [00:34:26] Speaker B: Ability, and, you know, some intellectual standards at some point. So, yeah, a lot of ways. But again, it's important to emphasize that of the 12 million people, you know, it was only roughly 2% of them that were sent back to their home countries. [00:34:41] Speaker A: What about the story about the girl with the boat? Can you talk about the girl, the boat with the girl's name? [00:34:46] Speaker B: Annie Moore? [00:34:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I can talk about Annie Moore. Yeah. [00:34:48] Speaker B: When the island first opened on January 1st of 1892, the first ferry to come in, the first ferry, the first ship to come in with immigrants, it was a very important moment, I think, for this new immigration idea. This, this whole federal immigration processing center. And so they wanted to make sure that they had a good front page image for, you know, the type of People they were allowing in. And so there is a story of a 17 year old girl, maybe she was 15 years old, she might have even been 13 years old. Some of the records are conflicting on this. But anymore, this pretty bright Irish girl coming down the gangway and some, I believe he was Austrian guy trying to shove his way forward and basically being held back by the officials so that they could get this moment where Annie Moore comes off the gangplank and you know, welcome to America and get this picture and again, make her the face of the new wave of immigration. Wow. [00:36:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that's fascinating. And so then they named a boat after her and it's at Ellis Island. Yeah, you pointed that out to me. I thought that was really interesting information. [00:36:09] Speaker B: Yeah, one of the. I don't know what the boat is used for actually, so I don't know what to call it. Like a coast. It's not Coast Guard boat, but. [00:36:17] Speaker A: Right. Oh, it doesn't. [00:36:19] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a boat there. There's a boat there. [00:36:22] Speaker A: So do you. Do you have any other stories that you feel are that resonate with you or that you think are really interesting to you? [00:36:31] Speaker B: So, yeah, one end of the hospital complex, we have the morgue and the autopsy theater. Really interesting space, really. I mean, you and I went in there and you just kind of feel the solemnity of it and, you know, knowing what was going on there. But if you imagine we have, you know, a million immigrants a year in some years coming through there from 75 different countries, bringing all manner of diseases and bringing all manner of illnesses, and this hospital became one of the most state of the art advanced hospitals in the country at the time. It was a place where a lot of physicians came to learn. That's one of the, I think, most interesting spaces there because, you know, when any of the 3,500 people who died on the island, you know, a lot of these cadavers were used for educational purposes. And so you can see where these doctors were coming from around the country to come and study and witness and watch and see. And so we have that room, the hospital being so state of the art, like when you go through it, you can feel like how much emphasis was put on light, on fresh air. There's so many large windows. They created a very sophisticated ventilation system there. [00:38:03] Speaker A: I remember you talking about that. [00:38:04] Speaker B: Yeah, there was a lot of emphasis on sanitation and sterilization and these weren't things that were standard across, you know, across the world at that point. And so it was extremely advanced for its time. And I think you really see that. [00:38:22] Speaker A: When you're there for ventilation, for instance, for like tuberculosis. So people air it out, so hopefully people wouldn't get infected. [00:38:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:31] Speaker A: That's so fascinating to, to see. [00:38:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:33] Speaker A: In person. [00:38:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:34] Speaker A: I mean, walking through there was just, I was, in every second, I was just in awe. I was amazed about what I was seeing and thinking about what happened here. And also that art installation is still there. That shows real immigrants. [00:38:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:50] Speaker A: That's kind of like cut out artistry, paint photographs. [00:38:54] Speaker B: Yeah. There's a street artist named JR who believes in 2014, came and did an installation of wheat pastes. That's what they're called, wheat paste, where he took photos from the archives of people who had been processed at the island. And he made these wheat pastes and decorated a lot of these spaces with them. And it's really haunting images. You can turn a corner and you see images of. There's a babushka one. There's an image in there of a lot of the doctors. There's several, actually. And so it really, I think, animates and activates the space in a creative way and think it helps bring that emotional resonance because you're looking into the eyes in some cases of the people who stayed there. [00:39:44] Speaker A: Right. Real people. It's like their life size, too. [00:39:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:39:47] Speaker A: You know, they're real. They're real sized photos. [00:39:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:39:49] Speaker A: And gosh, how do you, when you're walking through there by yourself, because I know you're there, you know, all the time. Do you ever feel anything or what are your emotions or feelings? I mean, just walking through there by yourself. [00:40:05] Speaker B: I always feel something there. And I, I feel like it's a place where the, the law of diminishing returns doesn't apply. I don't go in there and, and feel like it's a job or anything like that. I go in there and I, I, I feel, you know, how much, just how, how much of our country's history started here. How many people's journeys started here, how many people's families started here. And, you know, there's a lot to reflect on with it. There's a lot of beauty in it. [00:40:36] Speaker A: Right. [00:40:37] Speaker B: I said in the stories of the nurses and the stories of doctors and the care and effort that they put into this, there's a lot of sadness to it. There's, there's the 3,500 people who died there. There are the stories of the children being pulled away from their parents. And, you know, there are people who get sent back to their home countries. But There's a lot of, you know, there's a reason it's called the island of Hope and the island of Tears. And so there's a lot of joy, you know, and Ellis island and thinking about, this is where people started, right. This is where they're, they're, they became American and. [00:41:16] Speaker A: Right. [00:41:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:18] Speaker A: I felt respect there. I felt nothing but, you know, everything. But I felt, you know, just so much respect for, again, for the journey these, you know, people made for us to be here today. [00:41:29] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:41:30] Speaker A: And what they endured and the good and bad. Yeah, yeah. [00:41:34] Speaker B: And there's a lot, there's a lot today that's going on that I think, you know, it's helpful. And this is what we're trying to. It's one of the reasons we are trying to preserve the hospital and promote this story, you know, let people see what journeys so many of our families went through to get here and some of the similarities in the way that they've been presented in the past with how some of the immigrants today are getting presented. And I think of the hospital and the, the complex is a stark contrast to the Alligator Alcatraz, for instance, the way that we today separate children from their families. Like there, there are some disturbing similarities. We think of Ellis island as, you know, this relic of the past that's really, I think it's a symbol of an ongoing thing. An ongoing thing. America is a country of immigrants. It is a melting pot. All of these things that you hear when you really sit down and you really reflect on it, you really think about, yeah, these families coming in together from totally different cultures on the island, in the hospitals, these patients playing chess together, because that's a universal language there. And you think about all of this and chest beating, patriotism, a lot of the patriotism that people feel. I really understand it, the, the plight of some of their. These like your Russian Jews, for instance, who were coming here and, and understanding more about, like, the persecution that they had fled and why coming here was such a life altering event. And. Yeah, so I think these stories, we need to preserve these stories, we need to tell these stories, we need to promote these stories and we need to let them inform our modern political decision making. [00:43:39] Speaker A: I like how you worded it though. That's nicely said. That was good. That was really good. So is there anything else you want to tell us about the tours, Justin? [00:43:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I would love to tell you more about the tours. We run a hardhat tour seven days a week, 363 days a year. We run it six times a day. [00:44:01] Speaker A: Wow. [00:44:02] Speaker B: The groups are pretty small and pretty intimate. So the tours are 90 minutes. And I think you'll agree 90 minutes still doesn't feel like enough. [00:44:13] Speaker A: Correct. [00:44:14] Speaker B: Like you could spend several hours there. It is fascinating. It is unique. It is something that I think everybody can find something to relate to in it. [00:44:28] Speaker A: So powerful. It's very powerful. And I definitely related to the stories, listening and gosh, how my heart felt for what people went through in this journey. Like I said before, what they went through was just so powerful. I think everybody should. Should do it. Definitely. Yeah. How do they get you? Can they ask for you or is it just by random? They. [00:44:51] Speaker B: There's. There's better guides than me, so. [00:44:55] Speaker A: Oh, I disagree with that, my friend. [00:44:57] Speaker B: But they can book. They can book the tour directly on the website, Savellis Island.org the ferry ticket has to be purchased separately. That is only. [00:45:06] Speaker A: Correct. [00:45:07] Speaker B: Yeah. That's only purchasable via Statue City Cruises. [00:45:11] Speaker A: But so what they can do then, you know, is top off at Statue of Liberty for a little bit. [00:45:16] Speaker B: Yep. [00:45:16] Speaker A: Hop back on and go to Ellis island. Two seconds away. So that's. Yeah, yeah, you go, my friend. [00:45:21] Speaker B: Include. You can make a day out of it. It's a beautiful, beautiful trip. [00:45:25] Speaker A: Yeah, it was. It was. So I want to thank you for the tour because I had. I don't want to say a great time because that word doesn't fit great. But I have a very interesting and powerful time with you, you know. Yeah, it was really. I learned a lot from you. Really. [00:45:39] Speaker B: Okay, cool. Pleasure. [00:45:40] Speaker A: So website for the Hard hat tours. [00:45:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Savellisland.org awesome. [00:45:46] Speaker A: Before we let you go, Dustin, we here at the New Yorkers Podcast want to know what it means to you, Justin Southern, to be a New Yorker. [00:45:56] Speaker B: Like, someone told me when I first moved here that they didn't feel like a New Yorker until they'd been here for 10 years. [00:46:01] Speaker A: How long you been here? [00:46:03] Speaker B: Six. [00:46:04] Speaker A: Yeah. But you still feel like you're here. You're in the. [00:46:07] Speaker B: I have a child here. He was born here during the pandemic. I feel like that makes me. He's my anchor baby, so I think it makes me a New Yorker. He's in kindergarten now. And yeah, for me, being a New Yorker means I get access to the greatest diversity, the most diverse group of people in the world. There's something enlightening every day about living here. At any minute, your life could be completely changed here. You know, yesterday I was having a really, really bad day, and I had witnessed just A couple of acts of cruelty. People on the streets just yelling at other people. And then, you know, I sat down and had a drink, and this older lady from across the street sat down next to me and, you know, she said she sat down, she had a shot of tequila and a beer, and she stuck a straw in her beer. And she and I just Talked for like 20 minutes about our pets. And she'd lived in the building next door for 29 years. And it was just a really human moment that I don't feel like I get everywhere else. And I think she was originally from Caribbean somewhere. But, yeah, I feel like in New York, any minute you could have a really just profound experience. And that could be looking at the art, the architecture, the buildings. It could be an experience you have passing with a stranger. It could be whatever, a meal that you just ducked into some hole on the wall to have. And turns out it's the best dim sum you've ever had in your life. And so, yeah, it's a very real place. It's a place that makes you feel alive at all moments. [00:47:59] Speaker A: Perfect. I love it. I love it. Yeah, I understood everything you said there. I felt it. I. I get it. Yeah, that's totally. It's all true, you know. Thank you for joining us today, Justin. For this week's episode of the New Yorkers podcast, why don't you let everyone know where they can find you on social media and. Or the tours. The Hard Hat tours. [00:48:22] Speaker B: Yeah, you can find me at south by Southern on Instagram. I'm not much of a poster, but, you know, if you want to connect, I'm always happy to have conversations with anybody. The Hardhat tour you can find on savellis island.org we do, as I said, do six tours a day, seven days a week. It's the first tour, the earliest tours at 10:30 in the morning. So if you take the 9am Ferry, that gives you time to go to the Statue of Liberty first, do a little tour there, get on the next ferry, come over to. Come over to Ellis island and hop on one of our Hardhat tours. [00:49:00] Speaker A: Awesome. Please like and subscribe to the New Yorkers podcast, my friends, and you can follow the New Yorkers on social media. At the New Yorkers Podcast, you can leave a rating or a comment to let us know how you are enjoying the show. We read through all your comments and dm. So please, we would love to hear from you. Have a lovely day, my friends, and we will see you next time. And thank you, Justin, for joining us. [00:49:23] Speaker B: Thank you, Kelly, for having me. It's been great. [00:49:25] Speaker A: Awesome. Thank you New York100 for sponsoring this episode. To learn more about them, visit ny100.org. [00:49:37] Speaker B: This is the last stop on this train. [00:49:39] Speaker A: Everyone, please leave the train. [00:49:41] Speaker B: Thank you for riding with mta New York City Transit.