A Pair of American Islands

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One of the fights, however, became bitter: what to do with the southern, 17-acre half of Ellis Island. The Park Service has been inclined to turn the old hospital and its 17 ancillary buildings into a $65 million to $75 million scholarly conference center designed by the firm of Conklin Rossant. Iacocca and Burgee, on the other hand, pushed a $100 million to $150 million scheme to create what Iacocca called an ethnic Williamsburg, including a big new glass exhibition pavilion. Last February the dispute became public when Interior Secretary Donald Hodel fired Iacocca as chairman of the federal Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Centennial Commission (though Iacocca remained the head of the foundation that raises and dispenses renovation funds).

"It would be a little bit like Disneyland," admits Burgee of his plan for a permanent pseudointernational folk festival. "It's a little bit like colonial Williamsburg too. Is it bad to have some fun?" James Rossant derides the Iacocca-Burgee vision as "a potpourri of half-baked ideas." Says Rossant: "Every building must be restored exactly as the immigrant saw them." His conference center would be "a living use of the land, one that is intelligent and serious, inspired and inspirational, not silly and cheap like ethnic dances, children in wood shoes, and ethnic foods." A decision will be made by Jan. 1. The betting is on the conference-center scheme, to which Iacocca has recently dropped his opposition.

Debates over the restorations of Liberty Island and Ellis Island, and the relative importance of each, have at times seemed almost theological: each occupies a critical, distinct niche in the national mythology. Yet both are being repaired in the same, characteristic national fashion: a combination of technical ingenuity, can-do spirit, ambivalence about preservation and a ferocious patriotic pride. Two very different, very important islands--two American islands--are being redeemed.