Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll find out why a construction trailer has arrived at the museum on Ellis Island. We’ll also get details on a significant vote on the congestion pricing plan.
The museum on Ellis Island “tells a foundational story of who we are as a country because it tells a story of where we came from,” said Jesse Brackenbury, the president and chief executive of the nonprofit that operates the museum. “You’re walking in the footsteps of the 12 million people who came through.”
“But,” he added, “it’s a 34-year-old museum.”
It needs more than just a little freshening up, he said. His organization, the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, is beginning a $100 million project for what he called “a reimagined museum,” with a 120-foot-wide video screen. For visitors who want to look up relatives — “the emotional core of a visit,” Brackenbury said — there will be an expanded family history center with a database of 154 million names.
The construction trailer arrived last week. The work won’t immediately be obvious to the public, Brackenbury said, because the early stages do not involve public spaces. The museum will remain open as the work moves into those areas.
The changes inside the elaborate Beaux-Arts building will dovetail with a $17.7 million “infrastructure improvement project” outside paid for by the National Park Service. The brick-and-limestone facade will be repointed, and the half-moon-shaped windows beneath the vaulted ceilings inside will be replaced. The Park Service said in a statement that the work was “critical to the long-term protection of the building.”
In its heyday, about 5,000 immigrants a day moved through Ellis Island.
And then, in the 1920s, the government all but abandoned the island, and it fell into disrepair. In the 1980s, the automobile executive Lee Iacocca was responsible for raising money to restore the building for the museum, as well as to refurbish the Statue of Liberty.
Brackenbury said that the foundation had raised $60 million for the renovations to the museum. The plans call for modernizing more than 100,000 square feet of exhibit space, making the museum “more welcoming and comforting and accessible.”
“Visitors who come are often a little tired by the time they get there,” he said. “You’ve waited for the ferry and taken the ferry, and it’s been a long day already.” Then, he added, “you get off the ferry with 500 to 1,000 people. It isn’t like most museums where people are trickling in. It’s coming in waves.”
So additional seating will be installed. The air conditioning and heating systems will be updated. Wi-Fi will reach throughout the building. And the signs will be better, Brackenbury said.
“Right now there’s a big sign with arrows pointing in all directions” at the entrance, he said. “If you stop and look at that sign, people would run you over.”
The space will be reconfigured, with a Park Service information desk to the side. That gargantuan video screen will fill one wall, and there will be a display paying homage to the original purpose of the space. It was a baggage room where people checked their suitcases and trunks on the way to the all-important moment with an immigration clerk.
Museum officials recognize that the pace for visitors is faster these days: They plan to install a gallery displaying themes of the museum adjacent to the baggage hall. “If you only have 20 minutes, it’s right there, and you can take in what this museum is all about,” Brackenbury said. “And we’ll also have 137,000 square feet of space if you have time for that.”
M.T.A. board votes to approve congestion pricing
The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority gave its approval on Wednesday to the congestion pricing program for New York City. Most passenger vehicles entering the designated congestion zone (at 60th Street and below in Manhattan) will be charged $15 a day from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays, and from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends. Details on the tolls for other vehicles are here.
The program, the first of its kind in the nation, is intended to reduce traffic and raise $1 billion a year for transit improvements.
The M.T.A. has installed nearly all the toll readers and is looking to begin collecting tolls in mid-June. But congestion pricing still faces challenges from five lawsuits filed by elected officials and residents in New York and New Jersey. The Federal Highway Administration is also reviewing the tolling plan but is expected to approve it.
Opponents of congestion pricing have cited the cost of the tolls as well as the potential environmental effects of shifting traffic and pollution to other areas, as drivers avoid the congestion zone. Representative Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat whose district reaches across northern New Jersey from the George Washington Bridge, issued a statement calling the M.T.A. vote “a rubber stamp on the M.T.A.’s unprecedented cash grab.”
For now, with the lawsuits working their way through the courts, the transit agency has suspended some capital construction projects that were to be paid for by congestion pricing. Officials said at a committee meeting on Monday that work to modernize subway signals on the A and C lines had been delayed. A hearing is scheduled for April 3 and 4 on what is considered the most serious legal challenge, a lawsuit brought by the State of New Jersey.
Not everyone will have to pay the $15 to enter the center of Manhattan. Emergency vehicles like fire trucks, ambulances and police cars, as well as vehicles carrying people with disabilities, were exempted under the state’s congestion pricing legislation. There are also exemptions for school buses on contract with the city’s Department of Education. In addition, specialized government vehicles — garbage trucks, for example, and some city-owned vehicles, like those used for sanitation inspections in the congestion zone — will be exempt.
METROPOLITAN diary
Banana split
Dear Diary:
It was the 1960s, and my piggy bank was filled with nickels, dimes and quarters from my allowance and doing extra chores: hanging clothes on the clothesline outside the window of our second-floor apartment, scrubbing floors, vacuuming and demolishing spider webs.
The multicolored string of balloons over the lunch counter at F.W. Woolworth had caught my eye many times.
My best friend met me there one day, and we participated in a child’s version of gambling: The cost of a three-scoop banana split — one cent or one dollar — was determined by a small piece of white paper inside a balloon.
An aproned white-uniformed waitress appeared at the counter to record our balloon selections. I changed my mind silently many times before making my choice. Finally, I picked the red balloon; my friend immediately picked the blue.
With great ceremony, the waitress produced a pin from her pocket and popped both balloons with a swift, deft poke.
The paper inside the red balloon indicated a price of $1; the one inside the blue balloon said 1 cent.
Tears welled in my eyes as I chastised myself not to be a sore loser. My friend patted me gently.
“Don’t worry,” she said as we handed the waitress our money. “We are in this together.”
We pooled our remaining money and spent it on the photo booth, wrapping our arms around one another for a photo that remained on my mirrored dresser for many years.
The banana split paled in comparison.
— Judith Gropp
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
I’m going on vacation for a couple of weeks. My colleagues from the Metro desk will keep us posted here every day. See you in mid-April. — J.B.
