From the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, millions of immigrants entered the United States through Ellis Island. Now a popular tourist stop in New York Harbor, part of the island’s aging seawall has been deteriorating for a number of years. An infusion of American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) funds allowed the National Park Service to hire our team to investigate site conditions at the 100-year-old crumbling seawall and develop a design to structurally restore five different wall types and the granite facing of the seawall.

The seawall showed varying degrees of deterioration and failure, leading to sinkholes and loss of fill that was undermining some of the island’s historic buildings. This project maintains the structural integrity of the seawall, prevents further damage and ensures public safety. The work included the 5,333-foot perimeter of the island with four structural wall types designed and built between 1913 and 1935. We performed a geotechnical evaluation with borings and test pits, a waterside inspection with ground penetrating radar to detect subsurface voids behind the seawall and related investigations, then completed the schematic and final designs to stabilize the granite block-faced seawall. The work was performed on a fast-track basis to meet the compressed schedule dictated by the requirements of ARRA funding.