Review: Ellis Island hard hat tour, New York City

The Ellis Island hard hat tour offers a behind the scenes look at the entry place to the United States for more than 12.5 million immigrants. It also gives access to the JR art installation.

This review of the Ellis Island hard hat tour is part of a special New York City collection created to celebrate the new direct flights from Sydney to New York. To find many more great things to do in New York City, head this way.

Ellis Island hard hat tour review

The laundry room at Ellis Island encapsulates the zombie apocalypse vibe. The surfaces are dusty, the machinery left in place rusty. At one time, there would be a furious 24 hour operation in here, washing up to 3,000 items of linen and uniform a day. Now, it feels like a lost ancient city, rediscovered after hundreds of years.

Which New York City experiences to book

There are hundreds of great experiences in New York City. But we’d strongly advise against bus tours (unless you like sitting in traffic for hours). Try these instead.

Boat tours: Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island | Sunset and city lights cruise | Complete round-Manhattan island cruise.
Get up high: Top of the Rock | Edge Observation Deck | Summit One Vanderbilt | Manhattan helicopter tour | One World Observatory | Empire State Building.
Museum entry tickets: 9/11 Memorial Museum | The Guggenheim | Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum | American Museum of Natural History.
Food tours: Chelsea Market and High Line | Lower East Side | Chinatown and Little Italy.
Central Park: Central Park carriage ride | Pedicab tour | Central Park Zoo.
Multiple attraction savings: New York CityPass.

How many immigrants passed through Ellis Island?

The Hard Hat tour at Ellis Island offers a very different perspective on the place that, for over 12.5 million immigrants between 1892 and 1924, was the first taste of America. The tiny speck in New York Harbor was the processing centre for new arrivals coming by ship from Europe. Most were looking to start a new life in the United States. Some – such as Stan Laurel, Irving Berlin and Bob Hope – would go on to become big stars. Others would slip into normal American life. And the unfortunates would be turned back, deemed too ill or undesirable to enter.

The main building was where most would be processed, and it is now home to one of the most fascinating museums on earth. It delves into the reasons people came, where they settled, and the nervous ordeals they went through on their way to a new life. There’s excellent use of historical records and personal recollections, and it is quite feasible to spend three or four hours engrossed in there.

The main building at Ellis Island, New York City. Photo by David Whitley/ Australia Travel Questions.

Statue of Liberty vs Ellis Island

Almost everyone arrives on a cruise that also visits Liberty Island to see the Statue of Liberty, and the classic mistake is the allocate the bulk of the time to the wrong island. The pair can easily be combined to make a full day out – but Ellis Island is the one that should have most of that day set aside for it.

Behind the scenes at Ellis Island

The Hard Hat tour offers a very different experience – and one that should be regarded as complimentary to the museum rather than a replacement for it.

It goes into the areas that made Ellis Island work. The general hospital for those who had to stay, quarantined. The morgue where doctors around the world would come to see bodies being dissected. The tuberculosis ward.

But the tour is far more about the atmospherics than the education. It’s the sense of walking through an abandoned city, all decades-old rubble and broken windows, which really sticks in the memory.

After being used by the Coastguard until 1954, Ellis Island was effectively left to rot. Documents, clothes and equipment have been left as it was, while grass grows wildly and geese use the island as if they’re in charge.

JR art installation at Ellis Island

And that feeling of communing with the ghosts of the past is accelerated by additions from French artist JR, who has been allowed to work his magic with a startling piece of location-specific art.

JR found old photographs of the patients, doctors and workers in the archives, and has blown them up to life size. The backgrounds have been cut out, and the images have been pasted around the buildings – so there are 2D nurses standing behind the bathtubs left in-situ, the ill are seen lying down next to rusty bedframes and women’s covered heads peer around the holes in the windows.

The era of the tired, poor and huddled masses is brought back in an unexpectedly provocative way. And the parts of the island left for dead are being revived in a way that stays with visitors long after they leave.

Booking Ellis Island tours

Ellis Island tours can be booked online.

More New York travel