Angel Island station redone as site to tell story of immigrants
Not long ago, the Angel Island Immigration Station was a historic mess. The buildings were in decay — the old hospital was falling down, for example. The poems written by desperate people being held at the immigration station had faded away.
The site was in such disrepair that the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the immigration station one of the 11 most endangered historic places in the country in 1999.
However, thanks to a major effort by private and public agencies, the immigration station made a remarkable comeback. On Wednesday, it made the National Trust’s list again, this time as a success story in historic preservation.
Angel Island led the list of 11 once-endangered sites that the National Trust said are “now thriving and contributing to their communities.”
“Angel Island is a real success story,” the trust said.
Thanks to $14 million in state, federal and private funds, the site has been turned into the Pacific Coast Immigration Center, designed to inform the public about immigration policies and to celebrate the role immigrants played in this country.
The Angel Island Immigration Station had a major role in the complexity of American immigration policies. While major centers like Ellis Island in New York Harbor welcomed immigrants — mostly from Europe — immigrants who went through Angel Island from Asia were regarded with suspicion, and many were turned away.
“Angel Island came to symbolize discrimination and exclusion instead of welcome,” an inscription on a stone at the entrance to the new immigration center complex says.
An estimated 500,000 people passed through Angel Island, about a third of them Asian, between 1910 and 1940. The Asians were subjected to particular scrutiny because various federal laws greatly restricted immigration from China, Japan and other Asian countries.
Some of the people detained on the island wrote poems and carved them on the walls of the buildings. The poems — most of them by sad and desperate people — were neglected until they were noticed by California State Park ranger Alexander Weiss in 1970. He brought them to the attention of the Asian American community and helped start a campaign that restored the immigration station.
“At a time when the challenging and difficult history of U.S. immigration is front page news, the National Trust has selected Angel Island as a reminder of the difficult journey many immigrants have endured in the last century in America,” said Stephanie Meeks, president of the the National Trust.
The other 10 sites on the trust’s “success story list” are Antietam National battlefield; St. Vibiana cathedral in Los Angeles; Governors Island in New York City; the historic Boston theaters; Little Rock (Ark.) Central High School; Nine Mile Canyon in Utah; Penn School in Frogmore, N.C.; President Abraham Lincoln’s cottage at the Soldier’s Home in Washington, D.C.; the Statler Hilton Hotel in Dallas; and Traveler’s Rest in Montana.