Ellis Island: The Dream of America
Ellis Island: The Dream of America is a work for actors and orchestra with projected images by American composer Peter Boyer, composed in 2001-02, commissioned by the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford, Connecticut. The work combines first-person narrations of seven immigrants who entered the United States through Ellis Island between 1910 and 1940, selected by Boyer from the Ellis Island Oral History Project, with Boyer’s original orchestral music. The work has received over 170 performances by more than 75 orchestras. A recording of the work released on the Naxos record label was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition in the 48th annual Grammy Awards. In April 2017, performances by Pacific Symphony of "Ellis Island: The Dream of America" were filmed for broadcast on PBS’ "Great Performances" series in the 2017-18 broadcast season.
Ellis Island
The federal government, which had bought the island in 1808, began expanding the island by land fill, to accommodate the immigration station opened in 1892. Land filling continued in stages until 1934.
Nine-tenths of the current area is artificial island that did not exist at the time of the interstate compact. New Jersey contended that the new extensions were part of New Jersey, since they were outside New York's border and were in fact within New Jersey's border. In 1956, after the 1954 closing of the U.S. immigration station, the then Mayor of Jersey City, Bernard J. Berry, commandeered a U.S. Coast Guard cutter and led a contingent of New Jersey officials on an expedition to claim the island. In 1997, the state filed suit to establish its jurisdiction, leading New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to remark dramatically that his father, an Italian who immigrated through Ellis Island, never intended to go to New Jersey. The border was redrawn using information based on studies using geographic information science.