A Pair of American Islands

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The common experience of Ellis Island fostered a fitting sort of quasi- kinship among U.S. citizens: nearly half of all Americans today can trace their lineage through the enormous main registry hall. Last week, as two visitors strolled the rich, elegiac ruin, a workman spontaneously announced his family connection with the place. "My grandmother came here when she was 17 years old," he shouted, "with nothing but a suitcase full of oranges. A suitcase full of oranges!"

Ellis Island, a 33-building campus packed onto 27 acres, is almost as complex architecturally as it is emotionally. For a place not really so old (construction lasted from 1890 to 1935 off and on) and built for quick-and- dirty bureaucratic use, much of the compound is astonishingly lovely. The basic style is French Renaissance revival; the materials are brick, limestone and copper. The hospital, on the south side of the ferry slip, is a particularly pretty beaux-arts jewel box.

Of the thousands of ceiling tiles in the main building's vaulted, 58-ft.- high registry hall, only a few dozen needed replacing. In addition to restoring the 20-ft. by 20-ft. dormitory spaces (three families to a room), one wing of the main building will include new exhibition space and two theaters designed by the firm Beyer Blinder Belle. A broad entrance ramp covered by a vast canopy, original elements of the main building, will be rebuilt, but in unmistakably modern materials and forms. "We are trying to emulate the original designs but not trying to fool people in a Disney World sense," says Brooklyn-born Architect Michael Adlerstein, the enthusiastic Park Service manager of the Ellis Island restoration. "If it looks old, it is old." By the way, offers Adlerstein, his Russian mother came through Ellis as an infant.

The most evocative residue from those days are hundreds of graffiti scrawled on walls with pencils, knives and chalk in dozens of languages. As the restorers heated the building to bake out years of sea moisture, paint flaked off, revealing these immigrant artifacts. One Chinese graffito penciled on a bathroom wall is raw, wonderful poetry: "Thinking of home brings tears. I don't know what day we can be freed from our worries. Fathers, brothers, wives, children have scattered. Lucky just to arrive in the Flowery Flag country. I expected peace with no worries."

The overlap of responsibilities between private and public agencies has meant no peace and plenty of worries. "It's a clumsy bureaucracy," Adlerstein admits good-naturedly. Most disputes have been small. Burgee, architect of the new Liberty Island plaza, had a recent week long argument with the Park Service over the proper color (his white vs. its gray) of outdoor chairs. After 15 phone calls he surrendered.