The Statue of Liberty greeted the immigrants at the entrance of New York seaport. After all control examinations on Ellis Island, a small ship would transport them to the solid ground of America.     New York, the city that made the strongest impression on immigrants. Around 1910 it was the largest city of the New world and the second largest in the world. In that year, 4,765.883 inhabitants lived in it. New York was also the main seaport for European immigrants. In 1907, at the height of immigration in the United States, 1,004.756 persons were registered at the New York Ellis Island. For the majority the city was merely a starting point on their way to different parts of the United States of America.

Broadway and Times Square in New York: tall buildings and true skyscrapers were standing on both sides of broad streets, traffic was thick and noisy, and crowds of pedestrians were rolling along the sidewalks.   A Slovene woman emigrant sent a postcard to her friend in Carniola (1910) with a motive of Broadway and Trinity Building (built in 1904-1907).   The lower part of New York from the building (Woolworth Tower, built in 1913, 241,2 metres high). The emigrant Hela wrote to her relative or friend: “This is how Amerika looks like. We are doing well, we see very beautiful things. Hearty greetings Hela.” (1931)   Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower in New York, built in 1907-1909, 213 metres high.           City jail and Criminal Court Building in New York in 1910.   Only a few Slovene immigrants in the United States settled permanently in New York. There were just enough to have a priest. The priest Alojzij Leo Blaznik held his new service in the church of St. Janez Nepomuk in New York on June 17th 1906.   An illustration in remembrance of the new mass of Alojzij Blaznik: front (colour) and back (text).   Girls’ Mary’s society in New York in 1926. »In memory from Angeli. We have Mary’s society here as well and we take it more seriously than at home; although we are abroad and many of you think that we live here as cattle. It is not true, some of us live better than at home. Greetings Jašo Angeli.«

© Institute for Slovenian Emigration Studies, Slovenian Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana | Ljubljana, Slovenia | 2007 | All rights reserved.