Collection of Immigration Photographs, Mainly from Ellis Island, Early 20th Century

New York City and Sterling, Pennsylvania: Brown Brothers, 1912. Thirty-nine photographs measuring 8 x 10 inches and smaller. With Brown Brothers stamps verso and many with manuscript captions verso. Conditions vary; mainly very good.. Thirty-nine photographs, mainly of Ellis Island, with one from Partridge Island, Saint John, New Brunswick. The photographs include exterior shots of Ellis Island—both its new building and its old one, which burned down in 1897—and shots of new immigrants on boats and inside the processing center. The new arrivals are shown waiting aboard boats; lugging boxes and bags of their belongings to shore; getting their eyes examined for the bacterial infection trachoma which, if they had it, could mean they were returned home; and taking intelligence tests in the form of wooden block puzzles. Several shots show Christmas dinners, with one showing the dining hall elaborately decorated with flowers and banners. Of interest to historians of immigration via Ellis Island around the turn of the century.