These Historic Sites in the U.S. Were Once Endangered. Now They’re Thriving (Smithsonian Magazine)
Twenty-five years after Angel Island Immigration Station was named to the endangered list, the detention barracks have been restored and an immigration museum has opened in the former hospital building.
November 18. 2024
By Shoshi Parks
The barracks at Angel Island Immigration Station were already slated for demolition when state park ranger Alexander Weiss made a discovery.
For 30 years, from 1910 to 1940, the scrap of land in the San Francisco Bay had served as the “Ellis Island of the West,” a way station where immigrants crossing the Pacific were processed before setting foot on mainland U.S. soil. Migrants came from around the world—India, Australia, Mexico, even hundreds of Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi regime came through this Western port—but it was those from East Asia, especially China, for whom Angel Island Immigration Station was more prison than welcome center. With the Chinese Exclusion Act in full force, arrivals from China could be detained for months, undergoing dehumanizing medical examinations and interrogations before being granted permission to enter the country or deported back home.
Weiss, who began working on Angel Island less than a decade after it had been named a California state park, had heard rumors that the walls of the immigration station’s barracks were covered in Chinese calligraphy. Unused since the 1940s, the historic buildings were off limits to the public. Weiss wanted to see the written and engraved messages himself before they were destroyed.
Entering the barracks in 1970, Weiss trained his flashlight on the walls. They were covered in Chinese writing, not just in one room but everywhere, the calligraphy spreading like wildflowers across the dormitories. Most were poems, more than 200 of them altogether, each an expression of the hopes and fears of the Chinese immigrants detained at Angel Island.
As news of the poetry spread, a movement to save the Angel Island Immigration Station took shape. By 1997, the site had secured National Historic Landmark status. Two years later, the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed the still underfunded and languishing site on its annual list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.
The recognition made all the difference, says Edward Tepporn, executive director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, helping to “galvanize the fundraising to undertake a major renovation.” Twenty-five years later, the detention barracks have been restored, an immigration museum has opened in the former hospital building, and the site is thriving.