<P> The first station was a three - story - tall structure with outbuildings, built of Georgia Pine, containing the amenities thought to be necessary . It opened with fanfare on January 1, 1892 . Three large ships landed on the first day, and 700 immigrants passed over the docks . Almost 450,000 immigrants were processed at the station during its first year . On June 15, 1897, a fire of unknown origin, possibly caused by faulty wiring, turned the wooden structures on Ellis Island into ashes . No loss of life was reported, but most of the immigration records dating back to 1855 were destroyed . About 1.5 million immigrants had been processed at the first building during its five years of use . Plans were immediately made to build a new, fireproof immigration station . During the construction period, passenger arrivals were again processed at the Barge Office . Edward Lippincott Tilton and William A. Boring won the 1897 competition to design the first phase, including the Main Building (1897--1900), Kitchen and Laundry Building (1900--01), Main Powerhouse (1900--01), and the Main Hospital Building (1900--01). </P> <P> The present main structure was designed in French Renaissance Revival style and built of red brick with limestone trim . After it opened on December 17, 1900, the facilities proved barely able to handle the flood of immigrants that arrived in the years before World War I. In 1913, writer Louis Adamic came to America from Slovenia, then part of the Austro - Hungarian Empire, and described the night he and many other immigrants slept on bunk beds in a huge hall . Lacking a warm blanket, the young man "shivered, sleepless, all night, listening to snores" and dreams "in perhaps a dozen different languages". The facility was so large that the dining room could seat 1,000 people . It is reported the island's first immigrant to be processed through was a teenager named Annie Moore from County Cork in Ireland . </P> <P> After its opening, Ellis Island was again expanded, and additional structures were built . By the time it closed on November 12, 1954, 12 million immigrants had been processed by the U.S. Bureau of Immigration . It is estimated that 10.5 million immigrants departed for points across the United States from the Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal, just across a narrow strait . Others would have used one of the other terminals along the North River (Hudson River) at that time . At first, the majority of immigrants arriving through the station were Northern and Western Europeans (Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Great Britain, and the Scandinavian countries). Eventually, these groups of peoples slowed in the rates that they were coming in, and immigrants came in from Southern and Eastern Europe, including Jews . Many reasons these immigrants came to the United States included escaping political and economic oppression, as well as persecution, destitution, and violence . Other groups of peoples being processed through the station were Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Serbs, Slovaks, Greeks, Syrians, Turks, and Armenians . </P> <P> Between 1905 and 1914, an average of one million immigrants per year arrived in the United States . Immigration officials reviewed about 5,000 immigrants per day during peak times at Ellis Island . Two - thirds of those individuals emigrated from eastern, southern and central Europe . The peak year for immigration at Ellis Island was 1907, with 1,004,756 immigrants processed . The all - time daily high occurred on April 17, 1907, when 11,747 immigrants arrived . After the Immigration Act of 1924 was passed, which greatly restricted immigration and allowed processing at overseas embassies, the only immigrants to pass through the station were those who had problems with their immigration paperwork, displaced persons, and war refugees . Today, over 100 million Americans--about one - third to 40% of the population of the United States--can trace their ancestry to immigrants who arrived in America at Ellis Island before dispersing to points all over the country . </P>

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