Galveston Immigration Stations

Who came through Galveston is the part the buildings do not say. The Handbook of Texas counts nearly 50,000 immigrants between 1906 and 1914, among them Bohemians, Moravians, Galicians, Austrians, Romanians, Swiss, English, Poles, Italians and Dutch, along with some 10,000 Jews. By 1915 the port was called a second Ellis Island. Germans had come earlier: the 1850 census gave more than 40 percent of the city's people German surnames. An estimated 750,000 immigrants entered by way of Galveston between 1839 and 1920.

What the plaque says

Galveston Immigration Stations Galveston was the port of entry for thousands of immigrants who settled in Texas and the southwest. Federal laws enacted in 1875 ended the unrestricted entry of immigrants into the country and led to the establishment of the area's first U. S. Immigration Station at Galveston's Pier 29. There U. S. Customs officials conducted medical exams, baggage inspections and formal processing of immigrants; those found to be diseased or incapacitated faced deportation. The U. S. Congress chose Galveston over New Orleans as the site of a major new Federal immigration station in 1906. Plans to build an impressive immigrant landing station on Pelican Island comparable to New York's Ellis Island facility were never fully realized. The scaled-down station, fully operational by 1913, was damaged by hurricane winds in 1915 and closed in 1916. The immigration offices were subsequently relocated to a building on Galveston's 21st Street. A new 3-story immigration station containing immigration offices, dormitories, medical facilities, a kitchen, and dining and recreational areas was completed here at 1700 Strand Avenue in 1933. It was used as an immigration and deportee-staging facility until about 1940 when it was converted for use as a U. S. Customs Office. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas Seaport Museum and the Elissa — 0.3 mi
  An iron barque launched in Aberdeen in 1877 that called at Galveston twice, ended up smuggling in the Adriatic, and was bought back from a Greek scrapyard to sail again from Pier 22.
• The Strand — 0.3 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
• 1892 Bishop's Palace — 0.5 mi
  Nicholas Clayton's stone house on Broadway for the railroad lawyer Walter Gresham, later home to Galveston's Catholic bishops and one of the most admired Victorian houses in the country.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 0.7 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.

More markers nearby

• Dominican Sisters Congregation of the Sacred Heart — steps away
• Old Galveston Market House and City Hall — steps away
• American National Insurance Company — 0.2 mi
• Jean Lafitte — 0.2 mi