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“They rewarded with magnificent gifts the country that had received them with such magnificent hospitality,” declared a New York Times editorial looking back with pride at the achievements of immigrants who had passed through Ellis Island. “Perhaps some day a monument to them will go up on Ellis Island,” it continued, admonishing its readers that the “memory of this episode in our national history should never be allowed to fade.”

In the glow of postwar prosperity, assimilation, and suburbanization, few cared to keep that memory alive. That would have to wait for another day.

Part V

MEMORY

Chapter 18

Decline

What the son wishes to forget, the grandson wishes to remember.

—Marcus Lee Hansen, 1938

A BUSINESSMAN READING THE SEPTEMBER 18, 1956, EDItion of the Wall Street Journal would have come across an advertisement for an exciting new opportunity. The federal government’s landlord, the General Services Administration (GSA), was soliciting sealed bids for the purchase of “one of the most famous landmarks in the world.”

The GSA offered to sell the entire twenty-seven-acre Ellis Island facility, including all thirty-five buildings and the old ferryboat Ellis Island, which had previously carried immigrants from the Manhattan piers to the island. Ellis Island, the advertisement proclaimed, would be the perfect location for an oil-storage depot, warehouses, manufacturing, or import-export processing.

The sale was made possible by the fact that the facilities at Ellis Island had been deemed surplus property by the U.S. government since it had closed its doors in November 1954. The United States had witnessed only about two hundred thousnd immigrants that year, with fewer than half of them passing through New York. Ellis Island had served its purpose; its heyday was well in the past. While a Times editorial hoped that the memory of Ellis Island’s peak years and its role in American history would not fade away, the GSA had more pressing matters. No other government agency wanted the vacant island, and Uncle Sam could not hold onto it indefinitely, especially when it was paying $140,000 a year for security and upkeep.

So the GSA opened up bidding for Ellis Island to private individuals and corporations. The idea of selling the historic site did not sit well with everyone. “If you can auction off Ellis Island,” a Jersey City congressman wrote President Eisenhower, “perhaps you will be auctioning off the Statue of Liberty next.” A Greek American wrote Eisenhower of his arrival at Ellis Island as a child in 1914. “I first sensed the grandeur of this great country,” this first-generation immigrant wrote, “when I landed on the Island.”

In response, the Eisenhower administration temporarily suspended the sale less than a week after the Journal advertisement appeared. Some suggested turning Ellis Island into a national monument that would pay tribute to the contribution of immigrants. That ran into opposition from a group already preparing to open up the American Museum of Immigration at the base of the Statue of Liberty. One of the leaders of that project argued that Ellis Island was the wrong place for a national shrine. “No immigrant was ever attracted to America by Ellis Island,” wrote William Baldwin. “Liberty Island is a happy place of continuing inspiration, not a depository of bad memories.”

Some of the proposals for Ellis Island included a clinic for alcoholics and drug addicts, a park, a “world trade center,” a modern and innovative “college of the future,” private apartments, homes for the elderly, and a shelter for juvenile delinquents. Other proposals were less realistic. Bronx congressman Paul Fino suggested a national lottery center would be in keeping with the history of the island, since immigrants “gambled for a new life in this land of ours.”

When bidding opened in 1958, the highest offer was just over $200,000 for a property the government considered worth more than $6 million. The high bidder was a New York builder named Sol Atlas, who wanted to turn Ellis Island into