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Momjian, one of the event’s organizers, captured its meaning for Armenians and other immigrants. “For many, Ellis Island was a sad and disconcerting beginning to life in the United States,” Momjian wrote. “It is therefore a measure of our success as Americans that we return to this place, no longer afraid, intimidated, or bewildered, but confident and grateful for the blessings we have experienced in this country.” The novelist William Saroyan described how his grandmother was almost excluded upon arrival because of poor eyesight. Though Saroyan was born in the United States, he wrote that Ellis Island was in his “very marrow.”

Riding this wave of nostalgia and ethnic pride, Peter Sammartino, a university official and son of Italian immigrants, began the Restore Ellis Island Committee in hopes of eventually opening it to visitors. It succeeded in getting Congress to appropriate $1 million for the effort, as well as $7 million to rebuild the island’s seawall. Thanks to Sammartino’s efforts, the National Park Service opened the main building to the public for a limited number of guided tours in 1976, but the island was still a mess. Journalist Sydney Schanberg called it “about as romantic as a row of hollow buildings in the South Bronx.” Ellis Island was closed again for repairs in 1984.

In that same year, Geraldine Ferraro became not just the first woman from a major American political party to run on a presidential ticket, but also the first Ellis Island descendant. Walter Mondale’s selection of Ferraro as a running mate signaled the importance of ethnic identity to the campaign. So did the choice of Mario Cuomo, another New

York Democrat, to give the keynote address at the party’s convention. “The Battle for Ellis Island” is how political writer Michael Barone

dubbed the campaign. “What’s important in 1984 is not how each

ticket appeals to specific ethnic groups,” Barone wrote, “but which is

more successful in appealing to the Ellis Island tradition generally.” Republicans would point to free-market capitalism as instrumental in the

success of Ellis Island immigrants, while Democrats would argue for

the importance of the New Deal in making second- and third-generation Americans part of the middle class.

In 1988, the Democratic Party nominated another child of Ellis

Island as its presidential candidate. Running against blue-blood Republican George H. W. Bush, Michael Dukakis played up his background

as the son of Greek immigrants. In his acceptance speech, the Massachusetts governor made prominent mention of his late father, “who

arrived at Ellis Island with only $25 in his pocket, but with a deep and

abiding faith in the promise of America.” During the campaign, Dukakis made a red, white, and blue appearance at Ellis Island, where he discussed his parents’ arrival decades earlier. “Their story is your story,”

he said. “It is our story; it is the story of America.”

Ferraro and Dukakis were political losers, but as Newsweek’s Meg

Greenfield noted, Ellis Island “has become the East Coast equivalent

of the log cabin, poor farm-boy upbringing and the rest of that Americana unavailable to so many people with exotic surnames.” Now firmly entrenched in the nation’s psyche and historical

memory, Ellis Island was once again ready to take its place on the

public stage. After years of restoration and fundraising by the Statue

of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation, a renovated Ellis Island was finally

reopened on September 9, 1990. An economic recession that year led

to a far more restrained event than the glitzy 1986 unveiling of the refurbished Statue of Liberty.

At the cost of over $150 million, the main building on the island’s

north side was opened to the public as an immigration museum. Visitors

disembarking from the ferry would stroll up the path toward the building just as many of their ancestors had. Arriving in the first floor, they

would then make their way up a set of stairs, a replica of the original,

where inspectors and doctors once closely examined immigrants as they

wound their way upstairs.