page_title: Ellis Island
section_title: South side
hierarchical_section_title: Ellis Island / Current use / South side
caption_attribution_description: English: The Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital, on the south side of the island was a complex of buildings which served arrivals at the immigration station, and since it closure in 1957 remains unused and varying states of deterioration, and unaccessible to the public.
context_page_description: Ellis Island is a federally owned island in New York Harbor that was the United States' busiest immigrant inspection station. From 1892 to 1954, approximately 12 million immigrants arriving at the Port of New York and New Jersey were processed there under federal law. Today, it is part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument, accessible to the public only by ferry. The north side of the island is the site of the main building, now a national museum of immigration. The south side of the island, including the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital, is only open to the public through guided tours.
  In the 19th century, Ellis Island was the site of Fort Gibson and later became a naval magazine. The first inspection station opened in 1892 and was destroyed by fire in 1897. The second station opened in 1900 and housed facilities for medical quarantines as well as processing immigrants. After 1924, Ellis Island was used primarily as a detention center. During both World War I and World War II its facilities were also used by the United States military to detain prisoners of war.
context_section_description: The south side of the island, home to the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital, is abandoned and remains unrenovated.  Disagreements over its proposed use have precluded any development on the south side for several decades. The NPS held a competition for proposals to redevelop the south side in 1981 and ultimately selected a plan for a conference center and a 250-to-300-room Sheraton hotel on the site of the hospital. In 1985, while restoration of the north side of Ellis Island was underway, Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel convened a long-inactive federal commission to determine how the south side of Ellis Island should be used. Though the hotel proposal was dropped in 1986 for lack of funds, the NPS allowed developer William Hubbard to redevelop the south side as a convention center, though Hubbard was not able to find investors. The south side was proposed for possible future development even through the late 1990s.
  Save Ellis Island led preservation efforts of the south side of the island. The ferry building remains only partially accessible to the general public. As part of the National Park Service's Centennial Initiative, the south side of the island was to be the target of a project to restore the 28 buildings that have not yet been rehabilitated.
  In 2014, the NPS started offering guided public tours of the south side as part of the "Hard Hat Tour", which charged an additional fee that would be used to support Save Ellis Island's preservation efforts. The south side also includes "Unframed – Ellis Island", an art installation by the French street artist JR, which includes murals of figures who would have occupied each of the respective hospital buildings.
caption: Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital
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