Ellis Island Hospital: Part 1
On Saturday Jim, Katie, Grace and I took a tour of the abandoned hospital complex on the south side of Ellis Island. I had booked our tickets the day they became available—back on balmy October 1st. Saturday was very cold, but brilliantly sunny, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that the tour was the best tour I've ever taken in my entire life.
This was due partly to us lucking into a private tour when the other people scheduled for our time never showed up, partly due to our incredibly knowledgable, friendly and all-around awesome tour-guide, and partly due to the fact that the buildings are in such a beautiful state of decay.
The sunlight streaming in from open doors, broken windows and holes in the ceilings made every single angle more interesting than the last and as usual I took more photos than I thought humanly possible. I have a few more posts planned for the grounds and a wonderful art installation that was sprinkled around the buildings, but these are my favorites from the interior spaces.
The complex reminded me so much of Eastern State Penitentiary, and as much as I adored our tour-guide, I do wish I had had free reign and more time to spend taking photos. It's probably better that I had some parameters, however, because I most definitely would have just never left.
Our tour was long—even longer than the allotted 90 mins because our guide was that awesome—but I could have spent days inside of the crumbling autopsy room, mortuary, doctors' quarters, laundry, infectious disease wards and all of the other fascinating corridors winding around the island.
Surprising no one, my favorite room was the autopsy room with its four huge body freezers, sinks, lights and theater-like set-up. Ellis Island was a state-of-the-art medical facility and teaching hospital in its heyday and was one of the largest public health hospitals in the US.
In 1930 the hospital closed, and the entire complex was abandoned in 1954—this is the first time that the public has ever been allowed to tour the buildings. Some of the complex is still far too unstable to allow visitors and everyone must sign a waiver and wear a hardhat before beginning the tour.
I would absolutely take the tour again in a heartbeat. Even if the ticket price might seem pricey ($43), all of that money goes to Save Ellis Island, a group whose mission it is to help protect and preserve the historic hospital complex.
