A Historic Gateway Is Being Reopened : Immigration: A new national museum on New York’s Ellis Island commemorates the millions who helped make America a melting pot.

For the millions of immigrants whose first stop on American soil was at Ellis Island, the experience was often frightening and bewildering.

“Everybody was herded like cattle into a great big building,” recalled 84-year-old Ellen W. Pierce of Covina, Calif., a retired school teacher who came to America from England with her family in 1920. “We saw several families who were split up. My brother and sister were hungry and crying for something to eat.”

Now, 36 years after the last immigrant was processed through the tiny island in New York Harbor, the one-time gateway to America is reopening with a new national museum commemorating what has been called the largest human migration in modern history.

On Sunday, Vice President Dan Quayle will stand on Ellis Island and dedicate the new museum, which is housed in the same majestic red-brick building with limestone trim and copper-domed turrets that served as the island’s processing center for more than half a century.

Known officially as the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, the remodeled national landmark is the culmination of an eight-year, $345-million restoration project that included the refurbishing of the nearby Statue of Liberty and is said to be the largest of its kind in this country.

Unlike the four-day, $36-million patriotic extravaganza that marked the reopening of Miss Liberty in 1986, however, the dedication of the Ellis Island museum will be decidely shorter and more subdued.

“It’s deliberately so,” says Stephen Briganti, president of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, a private association spearheading the restorations. “You can only do one Liberty Weekend in a lifetime. We deliberately are making this a very thoughtful, serious and, we hope, joyful celebration--but on a much lower scale.”

President Bush had originally been scheduled to be the keynote speaker. But he was forced to cancel his appearance because of a meeting in Helsinki arranged just this week with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev to discuss the Persian Gulf crisis and other issues.

“We’re disappointed that George Bush won’t make it, but Ellis Island is a great symbol of our past, and the President, at this point, has to be concerned with our present and our future,” Briganti said.

In addition to speeches by Quayle and Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan Jr., the Sunday ceremonies will include musical selections from around the world, dramatic readings evocative of the immigrant experience and the swearing-in of 50 new American citizens by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

“I’m excited. It’s my first trip back to Ellis Island since landing there when I was 14,” said Pierce, the retired Covina school teacher, who is among 180 Ellis Island immigrants selected by lottery to attend the event as guests.

On Monday, the 100,000-square-foot museum will be opened to the public and is expected to draw between 1 million and 1.5 million visitors annually--about half the number that visit the Statue of Liberty.

Visitors at Ellis will be able to relive a poignant part of what the millions of immigrants who passed through here experienced, stepping off a ferry at the same spot at which they debarked and viewing the Manhattan skyline from the same vantage point.

Inside the museum, exhibits, films, artifacts and taped oral histories will tell the story of the people who came to America’s shores from elsewhere--including the millions of Africans who were brought here forcibly as slaves.

“The exhibits in this museum put Ellis Island into the context of its time and the broader context of immigration to America over 400 years,” said Gary G. Roth, National Park Service project manager for the museum.

Ellis, a 27.5-acre parcel of land situated about a mile off the Battery, served as an immigration processing point from 1892 to 1954. More than 17 million immigrants passed through here, the bulk of them between the late 1800s and early 1920s.

The average immigrant spent three to five hours on the island, undergoing among other things a rigorous medical examination in which eyelids were raised to check for trachoma, a contagious eye disease, and scalps were examined for favus, a fungus infection.

“I was kept on Ellis Island for eight months because I had favus,” recalled Bessie Akawie, 80, of Los Angeles, who came to America in 1921 with her mother and five siblings from Russia. “I might have been deported if my father, who had come to America earlier, hadn’t taken two jobs so he could pay for me to stay until I was cured.”

After the federal government closed down the immigration station, the island and its more than 30 buildings fell into neglect and disrepair.

The cost of restoring the main building, the only one on Ellis refurbished so far, was $156 million.

All the money for both the Ellis Island and Statue of Liberty restorations was raised from private donors, Briganti said.

“This is a symbol of what the American people can do through private initiative when they are properly organized and want to get a job done,” he added.