8b. Statue of Liberty National Monument, Ellis Island and Liberty Island (Part II)

Location: Ellis Island
Built: Primarily 1897-1909
Architects: originally Boring & Tilton; later James Knox Taylor, Chester Aldrich.
National Register Number: 66000058
Listed: October 15, 1966
Visited: July 28, 2007



In contrast, Ellis Island hits me in the gut the moment we step off the boat, and keeps on hitting. Lately there have been moments when I turn around and catch a hunk of City Beautiful building unawares, and find that the word "ooh" has escaped from my mouth. This is one of those moments. I'm just itching to get my camera in front of the main building: the monumental scale; the copper and glass windows; the arches, great gobs of limestone icing on a Beaux Arts cake. Sumptuous.

Inside is a low stack of luggage and steamer trunks. It is educative -- it shows the museum visitor how much an immigrant had to haul ass to get here -- and yet it is as cool a gesture as an installation by Beuys. We race through some of the other ground floor exhibits emphasizing how-we-are-all-immigrants because we really need a decent meal.



After a walk through the Registry Room, which is beautiful but lacks function, we angle our way through the sides of the building. For a second, we're confused. On the floors and walls, white tile, imperfect and abused, marks this room as one used for intimate public purposes: the kind of place where fluids flow freely. Have we wandered into an unusually large bathroom area? No, can't be, as the bathrooms are to the side. Maybe, I dunno, a janitor's closet? Here? In the middle multi-gazillion dollar Beyer Blinder Belle renovation? Uh. Well, there's no indication we should go ahead, but no indication we shouldn't either, so we forge ahead anyway.



There is a chain of small rooms with no doors. Exhibits under glass detail the bureaucratic parade that determined the fitness of an immigrant as an American citizen. Yes, we are in the right place. The genius of the renovation was to leave some of the sordidness of the process intact. From the vantage point of the 21st century, the evaluative tests used seem all too simple, all too quick. They have the quaintness of discredited science, of science cloaking what is arbitrary. The exhibits juxtapose the tests with photos of the test subjects, looking frightened and alert like a baby bird in your hands.



A detail burns a hole in my mind. One exhibit details how immigrants were asked to copy a lozenge shape as a way to measure their cognitive development ("Children who are developmentally about seven years old have learned to draw a diamond, which is the culmination of many factors in physical, brain and visual development."), and casually mentions that such a test would be many immigrants' first experience with a pencil. My mind runs wild with the implications of this fact. My God. They came from a Europe of filthy and fabulous cities surrounded by slumbering blankets of village life unchanged for centuries save for, you know, war, progroms, disease, famine, slavery in all but name, things like that. And that Europe is just gone now. It feels about as distant as Dante and Chaucer. An unfathomable number of parallel lives reached over from this Europe, risking every stable thing they knew, to intersect in this one place. And why? To restart their lives. To exist free from the blood-red jackboot history. To live out the promise contained in "all men are created equal" and "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Like the pencil, these former Europeans may not have known Jefferson's words before coming to America -- but even so, they instinctually knew that this is what our country meant. What an amazing responsibility for any country to have, and what an impossible burden, perhaps one a country can't even pretend to carry for very long. (I hope otherwise.)

It may be corny to dwell on textbook patriotism like this, but for once, I am stunned into silence. It is too enormous to casually think about. I have nothing to say to my friend.

We silently walk through the remainder of the exhibits covering the "what-happened-next" of Ellis Island's visitors, then walk outside to see what else there is to see. But there really is nothing else to see. It turns out that the rest of the island, perhaps its majority, still hasn't been renovated. But as it is, Ellis Island feels so complete, I'm not sure what extra facilities could add to the experience.

8a. Statue of Liberty National Monument, Ellis Island and Liberty Island (Part I)

Location: Liberty Island
Built: 1871-1871 (Liberty)
Architect: Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (Liberty Sculptor); Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (Liberty Engineer); Richard Morris Hunt (Liberty Base Architect)
National Register Number: 66000058
Listed: October 15, 1966
Visited: July 28, 2007



There are perfectly fine reasons to visit Battery Park for its own sake. On the southernmost tip of Manhattan, it has camera-appropriate views of New York harbor and a wide swath of New York sky, and Castle Clinton, about which I'll discuss in its own post. Probably a few locals use its paths to jog or talk their dog for a walk, and employees of 17 State Street and One New York Plaza lunch under its trees. But sadly the most remarkable feature of the park are its lines, endless lines of tourists using it as a point of departure for ferries to Liberty and Ellis Islands -- no 21 acres of park could survive that responsibility with its own identity intact, no matter how charming the vista or ambitious its master plan.

Today, for sake of my crazy idea, I'm one of those tourists, as is Paul, who's accompanying me. Back when I worked downtown and found myself thisaway, I could only look at these lines and I think these folks suffered from a lack of imagination: why, of all the places to see in the city, would you want to see that? Not that I had any first-hand experience with which to judge. Before I came of age and started going on my own, I'd been taken to see New York City maybe about thirty times without the State of Liberty once being on the agenda...except maybe for a sail-by on a Circle Line tour boat back around 1985, when it was under scaffolding.

Once we get out tickets from Castle Clinton, our line lasts a good thirty to forty-five minutes. Given how the ferries depart every twenty-five minutes, I'm surprised that the line moves at a constant speed, rather than stasis punctuated by moments of rapid movement. There must be no slack at all in their people-processing system. It makes the the wait less of a bore. Paul and I use the time to talk about what's been happening in our lives -- but for every captive audience out in the open, there are the street entertainers enduring indifference and fascination alike: we get a steel drummer, a guy who did one-handed handstands, and another guy so annoying I've blocked out of mind what exactly he did, other than prevent Paul and I from talking. And then there are the living statues. Even with the summer heat, there are five Liberties in green make-up and flowing robes, and they form a gauntlet outside Castle Clinton to ensure that any Liberty-bound tourist gets a face full of their neediness. God, five of them! How they must hate each other! They likely fill their days with turf protection and muttered insults, all while trying to put their best freaky-green face forward for the Oklahoma and Osaka tourists. It makes a fella wonder: why must you exist?

Before boarding, we come to a security checkpoint. We remove all metal items into a bin and walk through one of those chromosome-shredding electromagnetic gates, exactly like in an airport. I remark how odd it is that neither Paul nor I think this is odd at all. I know that people blowing themselves up on Liberty Island is within the realm of possibility, but these precautions don't make me feel safer. Or less safer, or much of anything, really. I just assume this is something that, y'know, the government does and if you want to do certain things like see a tourist attraction or fly a plane, you just hafta humor the government every once and while.

Off the boat, the first thing on our minds is food. Neither of us had a decent breakfast, cuz we're dumb. But there's no decent food on sale, it's all grease and sugar with a few "health" options thrown in. I settle for a vitaminwater, hardly the best option because I feel like fucking crap after I gulp the whole thing down. We make our way towards the back of the statue. Next to a glorified tent that sells souvenirs, there's another temporary structure that looks another security checkpoint (or an abattoir) and through there is the entrance to the pedestal and museum, currently the only parts of the structure that people can enter since 9/11. (Liberty's torch has been closed to the public since the Black Tom explosion of 1916.)

My friend takes a long call on his cell related to work. I try wandering away to allow a modicum of privacy but he unthinkingly follows me and I end up soaking up some the details in spite of my better instincts. Meanwhile, somebody left a red cooler unattended. One of the park rangers notices this, asks around if anybody owns it, gets no answers, and clears the area. He is patient, but annoyed, much as I'm annoyed, that there are still people so carefree, or absent-minded, or stupid, they can leave behind a hunk of personal belonging out in the open and not think of the panic that might ensue. I lead my friend away, and towards a shady place to sit down in. When he gets off the phone, he has no idea what just happened. He apologizes for the phone call taking up some of time we're spending together, but I tell him it's OK. Patience is a key part of this kind of experience, I knew that going in, and if I couldn't tolerate a five-minute call, I'd totally lose my shit at a 45-minute line. Problem is, after overhearing a conversation between a park ranger and a tourist, it looks like we can't get into the statue. We need some kind of pass that has to be purchased in advance argh. So much for spontaneity. Or maybe we can get in, neither of us bother to investigate, we're already tired, I feel crabby and bloated from the stupid vitaminwater I drank so we settle for a walk around the island perimeter.

People around the perimeter clump together for what, from a distance, looks like some common purpose, such as a line for souvenirs, but a closer look reveals they're taking pictures of LIberty at all the best angles, just like countless photographers have done before them that day alone. I've got my opportunity for Statue of Liberty money shots, and yet I feel no urge. No matter where we are, Liberty never feels close. With no trees in front to block the tourist view, I can't get a feel for how tall it is. I notice for the first time how graceful Liberty's gown is: every fold overdetermined, every fold simple and natural in feel. But it's a curiously unaffecting moment, and I don't whether to blame myself or the crowds or the alignment of the planets. I come away knowing that nothing I've seen of the statue today has been striking enough to supplant my memories of it from pictures and TV. Or, in what amounts to the same thing, it's almost as if all I did was just watch it on TV again. I treat it like it was the world's biggest advertising icon: so big I've known it since birth, so big it's impossible to feel anything for it.