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 Immigrant Hospital
The original immigration station on Ellis Island opened January 1, 1892, and processed 700 people that first day. In September of that year, the Hamburg-America steamer S.S. "Moravia" arrived at with several confirmed cases of cholera. Every ship arriving in the port of New York was held at quarantine before being cleared to land. Passengers found to have dangerous contagious diseases were taken off ships at quarantine and transferred to the hospital at either Hoffman or Swinburne Island. Twenty-four of Moravia's passengers were ill and twenty-two deaths had occurred during the voyage. Many were children. It was believed that the outbreak occurred due to the ship taking on contaminated water from the Elbe river. The threat of a pandemic caused all shipping traffic to be suspended. The backlog of ships held at quarantine and the lack of adequate medical facilities to handle the volume quickly precipitated the need for a more robust healthcare facility to treat immigrants and merchant marine sailors.