Record guide

Castle Garden and New York arrivals, 1855 to 1890

Castle Garden was New York's immigrant landing depot from 1855 to 1890. Its own files are presumed lost, so the record of an arrival there is the ship's customs passenger list.

Before Ellis Island there was Castle Garden. On August 3, 1855, an old fort at the southern tip of Manhattan opened as an immigrant landing depot, which the National Park Service calls the first official immigrant processing center in the nation. In the 34 years before it closed on April 18, 1890, more than 8 million people entered the United States there, about two of every three immigrants of the period.

If your family says an ancestor came through Ellis Island but the ship reached New York between 1855 and 1892, Castle Garden or its stopgap successor is the likelier answer. The good news is that the passenger lists for New York in these years survive. The bad news is that the depot's own records do not, so you search the ship lists, not a Castle Garden register.

From fort to landing depot

The building began as the Southwest Battery, built on the rocks off Manhattan between 1808 and 1811 to defend the harbor. It was renamed Castle Clinton in 1817, deeded to New York City in 1823, and reopened the next summer as Castle Garden, a restaurant and entertainment center. A roof was added in the 1840s, and it served as an opera house and theater until 1854. The singer Jenny Lind made her American debut there in 1850.

After its immigrant years it became the New York City Aquarium, opened in 1896 and moved to Coney Island in 1941. The National Park Service restored the fort, and since 1975 it has been Castle Clinton National Monument, where visitors now buy tickets for the Statue of Liberty.

A depot run by the state

Before 1890, according to the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, individual states rather than the federal government regulated immigration. From 1848 to 1890 the New York State Commissioners of Emigration were responsible for receiving immigrants entering New York City. They conducted medical inspections and regulated boarding houses, railroad agents, and other businesses that dealt with newcomers, and after 1855 they ran the reception center at Castle Garden, under contract with the federal government, according to the New York State Archives.

That is why there is no federal Castle Garden file. The New York State Archives says the commissioners' records are not in the State Archives or the National Archives and are presumed destroyed. Their published annual reports survive in the New York State Library.

The customs passenger lists

The list that survives for your ancestor was made for a different office. Under an act of March 2, 1819, the master of every ship arriving from a foreign port had to hand a list of passengers to the collector of customs, sworn before the collector. For New York, the National Archives filmed these lists as microfilm publication M237, Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, 1820 to mid-June 1897.

Each list normally gives the ship's name, its master, the port of embarkation, and the date of arrival, and for each passenger the name, age, sex, occupation, the country the passenger belonged to, the country where the passenger meant to live, and any death on the voyage. Our passenger lists guide explains how to read these columns. The lists are arranged by the ship's arrival date and numbered from 1 in each calendar year.

The National Archives' own name index, a card index made by the Work Projects Administration in the 1930s and filmed as M261, covers New York arrivals from 1820 to 1846 and some later years only. For the Castle Garden years, search the indexes made by the National Archives' digitization partners. The National Archives also holds customs journals of vessel entrances at New York, 1820 to 1897 with gaps, which help find a ship's arrival date.

1890 to 1892: the Barge Office

When Castle Garden closed in April 1890, Ellis Island was not ready. The Immigration Act of 1891 put the federal government in direct control of inspecting immigrants, and the new Immigration Service took over collecting arrival manifests, a duty the Customs Service had held since 1820. While the Ellis Island station was being built, immigrants were processed at the Barge Office in the Battery. Ellis Island opened on January 1, 1892.

The customs lists on M237 continue right through these changes, to mid-June 1897. Separate lists kept by the Immigration Service at New York under an 1882 law were destroyed in the Ellis Island fire of June 15, 1897. For any New York arrival from 1855 to the middle of 1897, then, the customs list is the record to find. Our Ellis Island guide picks up the story from there.

On the page, look for

Find an arrival year in another record, such as a census year of immigration or a naturalization paper.
If the year is before 1892, look for the ship among New York arrivals in the customs lists, not in an Ellis Island database.
Search the name with spelling variants, and by first name and age, since the lists were indexed long after they were written.
Open the image of the full list, not just the index entry.
Copy the ship, master, port of embarkation, and arrival date from the top of the list.
Read the people listed next to your ancestor, who may be family or neighbors from home.
For an arrival from April 1890 through 1891, expect processing at the Barge Office, but still search the customs lists.
If the ship cannot be found at New York, try other ports before giving up.

Where to see them for free

The National Archives, which holds the New York customs passenger lists (M237). Copies of lists from 1820 to 1959 can be ordered with Form NATF 81 or online.
Ancestry and FamilySearch, which the National Archives lists as having digitized M237; FamilySearch is free, and Ancestry is free in National Archives research rooms.
The New York State Library for the annual reports of the Commissioners of Emigration.
Castle Clinton National Monument in Battery Park, Manhattan, to see the building itself.

Sources

How to cite this page

Daily Ancestor. "Castle Garden and New York arrivals, 1855 to 1890." Record guides. https://dailyancestor.com/records/castle-garden. Last checked 2026-10-12.