Baltimore’s Ellis Island
Although New York City’s Ellis Island gets more attention for its status as a hub for immigrants, just behind it was the port of Baltimore. The newly-opened Immigration Museum in Locust Point honors the experience of the millions who came through the port here.
- Copies of the guestbook at the German Immigrant House show mostly the names of sailors who sailed back and forth between Baltimore and the port of Bremen, where ships originated from. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)
- Looking out into the Harbor from the Under Armour campus, which sits next to the port at Locust Point where immigrants would arrive. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)
- Brigitte and Nicholas Fessenden helped construct the Baltimore Immigration Memorial, which now resides on the Under Armour campus. Earlier plans to build a full-scale Immigration Museum on this site fell through just before Under Armour’s acquisition of the land here. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)
- Despite Baltimore’s importance as an immigration port, there’s little physical evidence of its history. A high-rise condo now stands at Silo Point, the glassy apartment building at 1200 Steuart Street in Locust Point.(Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)
- The cornerstone of the German Immigrant House, now the Immigrant Museum, in Locust Point. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)
- The Immigration Museum currently occupies just two rooms of the former boarding house. The Fessendens hope to eventually restore the rest of the house, turning the upstairs rooms into re-creations of what apartments would have looked like for the city’s various immigrant groups. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)
- The Immigration Museum currently occupies just two rooms of the former boarding house. The Fessendens hope to eventually restore the rest of the house, turning the upstairs rooms into re-creations of what apartments would have looked like for the city’s various immigrant groups. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)
- The Immigration Museum currently occupies just two rooms of the former boarding house. The Fessendens hope to eventually restore the rest of the house, turning the upstairs rooms into re-creations of what apartments would have looked like for the city’s various immigrant groups. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)
- The Immigration Museum currently occupies just two rooms of the former boarding house. The Fessendens hope to eventually restore the rest of the house, turning the upstairs rooms into re-creations of what apartments would have looked like for the city’s various immigrant groups. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)
- The Immigration Museum currently occupies just two rooms of the former boarding house. The Fessendens hope to eventually restore the rest of the house, turning the upstairs rooms into re-creations of what apartments would have looked like for the city’s various immigrant groups. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)
- The Immigration Museum currently occupies just two rooms of the former boarding house. The Fessendens hope to eventually restore the rest of the house, turning the upstairs rooms into re-creations of what apartments would have looked like for the city’s various immigrant groups. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)
- Copies of the guestbook at the German Immigrant House show a child’s illustration of the boat that transported him from Europe to America. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)
- Exterior of the German Immigrant House, today the Baltimore Immigration Museum, located in Locust Point. Photo (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun)
- An archival photo at the Immigration Museum shows the exterior of the German Immigrant House in the early 1900s.
- An archival photo at the Immigration Museum shows an immigrant wearing a head scarf being screened for trachoma, an eye infection. Immigrants had to pass multiple tests before being allowed to stay in Baltimore — including an “imbecile test.” Those who failed were sent back to Europe.
- Immigrants awaiting inspection upon arrival in Baltimore. The trip from Europe to Baltimore took 2 weeks via steamship and up to 6 weeks via sailing ship. Upon arrival, immigrants had to pass a series of inspections before being allowed in to the United States.
- A storage safe at the German Immigrant House where immigrants might put their valuables, assuming they had any. The average immigrant arrived with $15, enough to live for just over a week. After that, immigrants expected to find jobs. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun).
- A photograph of migrants at the Locust Point train station; though some stayed in Baltimore, many more continued their travels West via the Baltimore and Ohio railroad. From Europe, a prospective migrant could purchase a door-to-door trip that included land and sea transportation to a new life in the United States. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun).
- A map of Baltimore in the early 1900s shows the patterns of immigrant settlement in the city. For certain ethnic groups like Czechs and Irish, the area of settlement was rigidly confined to a particular area. Other groups like Germans were more dispersed throughout the city. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun).
- An exhibit at the Baltimore Immigration Museum in Locust Point shows what kinds of items an immigrant might take from Europe to the United States — books and bedding, for example. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)
- An exhibit at the Baltimore Immigration Museum in Locust Point shows what kinds of items an immigrant might take from Europe to the United States — books and bedding, for example. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)
- A steam trunk at the Immigration Museum bears the name of the Bremen-Baltimore line, which carried ships from the German port city to the United States. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)
- An exhibit at the Baltimore Immigration Museum in Locust Point shows what kinds of items an immigrant might take from Europe to the United States — books and bedding, for example. (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)
- Exterior of the German Immigrant House, today the Baltimore Immigration Museum, located in Locust Point. Photo (Christina Tkacik/Baltimore Sun)
$15 – that was enough to start a new life in 1904.
That’s the average amount of money immigrants came over with in their pockets. Then, as now, people came to the United States for the same reason: to make money. The $40 or however much they paid for the voyage over was seen as an investment, one that would secure access to a higher-paying job. $15 would be enough to live on for just a few days, and then immigrants would get to work, either here in Baltimore, or after taking the Baltimore and Ohio railroad to another destination out West.
As Jacques Kelly reported in a recent profile of the Immigrant Museum, Charm City saw 1.2 million immigrants come in over the years. At one point, one quarter of all Baltimoreans spoke German as a native language. Germans were the largest ethnic group of immigrants, and became one of the wealthiest groups, along with Jewish immigrants from various nations in Europe.
Some of those German immigrants no doubt at one point stayed in the German Immigrant House – a boarding house where the Immigration Museum now stands. It was operated by a German Christian church in Baltimore to provide a place to stay for new arrivals who didn’t have family already in the area. Over time, the boarding house closed. Today it’s owned by the Locust Point Community Church, which uses the building as a school and church office. The upstairs have been primarily for storage — and even made a short stint as a haunted house for one particular Halloween (there’s still some leftover decorations upstairs, to the delight and horror of any would-be visitors who encounter the words ‘Help Me’ written in reddish paint on the walls, along with hand prints.) But even more recently, it’s been opened as the museum, with a small exhibit that gives visitors an overview of European immigrants’ experience in Baltimore.
Despite Baltimore’s importance as an immigration port, there’s little physical evidence of its history, as Nicholas and Brigitte Fessenden tell me. They’re the married couple partly responsible for the Museum coming together in the first place. A high-rise condo now stands on the site of the port itself, where new migrants would come in. Following their arrival, they’d be screened by doctors for trachoma, an eye disease. Many also were subject to an “imbecile test,” as The Sun reported in 1904. Those who didn’t pass were deported back to their native countries. But, as Nicholas Fessenden tells me, fewer than 1% of migrants were deported. (The shipping companies were held responsible for the cost of transporting migrants who didn’t pass muster back to Europe – as such, they had a strong incentive to screen people at the European border).
The Museum is a humble beginning to what the Fessendens hope will be a much larger longterm project to memorialize Baltimore’s immigrants. There’s tentative plans (funding permitted) to restore the rest of the house, turning the upstairs rooms into re-creations of what apartments would have looked like for the city’s various immigrant groups.