The inaccessible and abandoned islands of New York – in pictures

The Registry Room, Ellis Island, 1974 The Registry Room, or ‘Great Hall’, is where over 13 million immigrants were processed. The luckier ones were processed in a few hours, while the less fortunate might be held for further inspection or quarantined if they had a communicable disease. It was built in 1900 and abandoned in 1954 when the immigration station closed. In 1974 when the island was forgotten, it sat empty and abandoned. It was restored in 1990 and is now the home of the National Immigration Museum

Photograph: Phil Buehler