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Catherine Boland Erkkila, "Spaces of Immigration: American Ports, Railways, and Settlements" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2025)
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- [00:01]
Katherine Boland Erkele
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- [00:28]
Matthew Wells
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- [01:01]
Matthew Wells
Welcome to the New Books Network. Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm Matthew Wells, one of your hosts and today I'm delighted to be speaking with Katherine Boland Erkele about her book Spaces of Immigration, American Ports, Railways and Settlements, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2025. Spaces of immigration follows the travel routes of immigrants during a foundational period of American America, showing how the built environment of the railways and other infrastructure fostered segregation according to race, ethnicity and class. From the ports of arrival to the train cars of the Midwest, through lodging houses to settlements, the book offers us a greater understanding of the immigrant experience in America in the second half in the 19th century through the lens of spatial history, revealing the deep embedded conflicts still manifest in society today. Catherine, thank you so much for joining us today.
- [02:00]
Katherine Boland Erkele
Thank you so much for inviting me.
- [02:02]
Matthew Wells
Sure. Could you please start off by telling us a little bit about you and how you came to write this book?
- [02:08]
Katherine Boland Erkele
Sure. I am an architectural historian. I have my PhD from Rutgers University in the US and I came to this project through a class on American architecture. I needed to select a 19th century building to write about and this was early on in my graduate career and I decided to choose the Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal located in Jersey City, which is my hometown and where I was living at the time. And I started to research the structure. It was built by Peabody and Stearns, it's a well known architectural firm. In 1889 and as I was looking at the plans, I realized that there was an immigrant waiting room in the ferry house in front of the building. And I'd never seen this before. I looked up immigrant waiting room. I did a Google search, I searched through the library. I could not find anything about these rooms. And so I thought, well, the building is so close to Ellis island, so maybe that's the reason why there was this immigrant waiting room. And maybe this is unique and there are no other buildings like this. And as I continued in my research, I discovered other railroad station plans where there were immigrant waiting rooms, usually in port terminals, so terminals at ports of entry to the U.S. these rooms were separate from the building, so they were located in a peer structure or they were located in a ferry house, like at the Central Railroad of New Jersey. And then there were also immigrant waiting rooms in certain stations in the Midwest. There was even one in Spokane, Washington. So I was finding them throughout the country. And then this became my project. But I quickly realized that there was so much more to it. It's not just these immigrant waiting rooms. Like, what is the larger reason why there are these immigrant waiting rooms? And that's where I started my dissertation project, which then ultimately became the book where I look at this larger network of physical spaces through which immigrants travel through on their way into the country. And so it really expanded into a much larger project that involved the railroads, the government, looking at capitalism in the U.S. how these immigrants were contributing economically to the country. And then of course, issues of racism and xenophobia came up. And so it really quickly grew into this larger project.
- [05:04]
Matthew Wells
And a fantastic project it is, and a fantastic book. I mean, you mentioned within these different spaces, you mentioned beginning with this building, with this capital architecture, with a capital A, as I think you call it, an introduction I style architecture. Peabody and Stern, who are the main actors in this story? Are they famous architects? Are they government officials that you kind of alluded to there, who are some of the main figures who come up in the research?
- [05:32]
Katherine Boland Erkele
So there are some well known architects. The architectural firm Boring and Tilting built the Ellis island building that we know today. But a lot of these spaces were vernacular structures, specifically lodging houses that were built in the US by the railroad companies. And so the railroad companies were major players in this because they were the ones who were really working to recruit immigrants to come from Europe. They were specifically targeting northern and western European immigrants. And when I say that they're specifically targeting them, that means that they were publishing literature in those languages, like the Scandinavian languages, for Example German, they also had land agents stationed overseas to sell land to immigrants and then also selling train tickets in conjunction with land sales. So there's all of these incentives for immigrants to be traveling to the US Offering deals on land, discounted train tickets, things like that. So the railroad companies were major players, the government as well, in that within the book, I look at them working at the ports of entry. So in New York City specifically, but also in San Francisco, where they opened Angel island immigration station in 1910, which is where the majority of Asian immigrants were coming into the country at the time. And we can really see the government's policies, their immigration policies, because for Asian immigrants, specifically Chinese, there was the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. And so that really is manifest in the architecture. Whereas angel island was built more like a prison, like detention facility. Ellis island was built to facilitate movement into the country, to get as many people through the building and as quickly as possible. I mean, they're also dealing with millions of people coming through this building in the time that it was open. So the government played a big role. And then you have. Yeah, again, a lot of it is vernacular architecture, railroad station agents, who we know, I know their names from the archives, but they're not well known today. Um, so really it is a mix. And that's what makes this study unique in that we're looking at these, you know, capital A architecture buildings. The design for Ellis island won architectural awards in, at the World's Fairs, things like that. But then we're also looking at, you know, a temporary structure that was built in Kansas and that today they actually have a replica of it. The current building is no longer extant, but they've built a replica to honor that cultural heritage in that community.
- [08:46]
Matthew Wells
And, and with these different types of buildings, more auteur and signature architecture, and more perhaps contingent or less well known buildings. How did you. How did you decide to structure this, all of these different environments and these different spaces across this, you know, continental journey?
- [09:04]
Katherine Boland Erkele
Yeah, and this study really covers a lot. It's a broad study. And so how I structured it was I took the journey of an immigrant coming in through New York City and traveling west across the country. And the specific immigrant that I chose was Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote his travel memoir called the Amateur Immigrant when he traveled across the US in 1879. And so I use his journey as this, like, narrative linchpin to, to get us through all of these spaces. And he was a really unique figure to follow because he wasn't necessarily the typical immigrant that is using These spaces. He's from a wealthy family. He was really traveling across the country to be reunited with the love of his life who had recently divorced and was now, you know, he was chasing after her, let's say. And so he's not, he's not a poor person, he's not seeking land to create a new home. But he was a really wonderful observer of humankind. And I think a lot of his observations really enhance the narrative and give us a view into what it was like to travel at that time.
- [10:44]
Matthew Wells
Yeah, absolutely. It's an amazing way of organizing this narrative, but also picking up each of these spaces. And I wonder if we could, if we could follow Stevenson on his journey. You know, the kind of, and you mentioned it earlier, the first building that you explore really in depth is Ellis island and this award winning series of structures. And what could you tell us a bit about the kind of spatial analysis, the spatial history that you tell us about that site and what that tells us about the United states in the second half of the 19th century?
- [11:18]
Katherine Boland Erkele
Yeah, New York is actually a great example because prior to Ellis island, there was actually Castle Garden, which opened in 1855, and that was a state run immigrant station. And that was the first one in the US and so the state decided they needed to operate some form of immigrant station to vet the people coming in. And so what they did was in 1855, they located the station within a former fort building. So it's this round structure still there today in Battery park in Manhattan. It had been converted into an entertainment venue. And when that lease ended, the state decided to use it because it was a state owned building. They used it for this immigrant station. And it operated until 1890. There were 8 million people who came in through that facility. And that would have been the facility that Stevenson had come in because he was there in 1879. And then you have, there was a lot of corruption that was happening. So you have two different things happening. Architecturally, it's not ideal. It's a round building. Its walls are several feet thick, made of stone. So it was difficult to expand on it. They had to build all these outbuildings. It was also a crowded and chaotic environment. It was difficult to navigate people through the space. And so. And then the railroad pool was operating within it, so they would share the immigrant traffic among themselves. And there was all these accusations of the railroads taking advantage of people and charging them higher than they needed to, or sending them on longer journeys than they needed to. And so as this is all happening, then the federal Government steps in and takes over immigration. So we have this shift from state to federal immigration. And you can see that in the architecture from the Castle Garden, this round structure where it's very chaotic administratively and architecturally. And then you have Ellis island, which is the first purpose built immigration station. And so they're really combining the functions of a detention facility, a hospital, you know, an immigrant processing station where they're doing customs, things like that. And so when you look at the design of Ellis island, you see a very ordered plan. There's a clear progression of space through it that was never really possible to achieve at Castle Garden. And so. And again, you had the railroad pool operating within Ellis island. And they would send the immigrants who were traveling further into the US to one of the surrounding railroad terminals in New Jersey, which the Central Railroad was part of that. So New York is interesting in that you have this. The architecture resembles the shift from state to federal government control of immigration. And then I look at Baltimore, where the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad actually operated the immigrant station there. So there you're getting this sort of. The government was involved in that. There were customs agents in this facility, but the Baltimore and Ohio by and large was controlling this facility. So the immigrants would land, they would disembark the steep from the steamship directly into the pier building, which, where they would undergo the questioning. They would get their baggage. And then there was a rail line that they could take just directly from this facility. So there was really no need for people to go into the city if they weren't staying there. And then there was a boarding house operated by a woman, Augusta Cother, who. She had a contract with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to housed people overnight. And so that's the separate, interesting story. But in Baltimore, you have the railroad really in control of immigration. And then that company actually had a contract with the North German Lloyd Steamship Line. So any passengers leaving Bremerhaven in Germany would be going to Baltimore and traveling on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. So there's this interesting partnership that develops. And so you have a lot of German immigrants coming in through Baltimore. And then. So that's on the East Coast. Would you like me to move further inland?
- [16:17]
Matthew Wells
Well, I wonder if we take the journey across the, you know, across the U.S. i mean, I was. There was also a point in this chapter where you talk a bit about, you know, there are all these different facilities in this depot. The boarding house is money exchange as a relationship back back to northern German. Incredible. And some of the visual and the merchandising Kind of promotional material. Is there, Are there also, you know, are there other. Are there kind of. How are the different interiors mediated? Like, are the relationships between the steamships and the carriages and the depots? Like, what sort of interiors are we talking about people that, you know, experiencing?
- [16:53]
Katherine Boland Erkele
Yeah, so when they came into the US There were segregated immigrant trains. And so it would be kind of like the equivalent of traveling steerage on the steamship. And which is what Stevenson traveled on an immigrant train. But he, when he came over, he actually did not ride steerage. He chose to do second class, pay a little bit more, a little bit more money to have a few more creature comforts. Not many, but he was told, do not ride in steerage if you do not have to. But the immigrant trains were pretty bare bones. They were easy to clean. So it was all wooden interiors. And actually on sun lines, particularly earlier on. So in the 1850s, 1860s, 1870s, you have trains that were freight trains converted for passenger use. So they would be carrying immigrants east to west, and then they would fill the trains with whatever freight was going back to the eastern ports to ship overseas. So there's this very economical use of space. And so in the trains, there really weren't many amenities. Immigrants had to bring their own cushions to sit on, or you could purchase some along the way. And then in the immigrant waiting rooms, there is this marked difference between the immigrant waiting room and the main waiting rooms in these railroad stations. So, you know, in these port cities on the east coast, you have the immigrant waiting room separate from the main building. And as you move further inland, the immigrant waiting room is within the main building. It's no longer a separate structure. And in those spaces, we're talking about white tiled spaces. Um, there were bathing facilities there, laundry facilities in some of the larger immigrant rooms, like the Chicago and Northwestern Railway in Chicago. And the focus there was really on, again, on these easy to clean spaces that conveyed this sense that the companies were doing their part to keep, you know, the quote unquote, filthy and diseased immigrants away from the general population. Because that was really concern at this time. And then you look at the main waiting room. So I'll use the Chicago and Northwestern as an example. The main waiting room was really opulent. It was this beautiful double height space. It had barrel vaulted windows, or it had lunette windows. It was barren vaulted ceiling. It had Greek apolino marble. So it was this beautiful green marble. There's other marble throughout the space, mahogany seating. And that was a stark contrast to this, like white tile Steel immigrant room that was on a lower level. It was a single height built, a single height room. So you have the lower ceiling of the explorer exposed metal. So it's a very different experience. And yeah, so it's kind of what you would expect of the immigrants are able to purchase these lower class tickets, these affordable tickets for them. But the facilities were the equivalent of it. But there was also a lot of other cultural implications, particularly with like the sanitary nature of these tickets, things of what they're saying about how immigrants are viewed in American culture.
- [20:42]
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- [21:13]
Matthew Wells
And could you tell us some more about this? Is this a process of making Americans as people kind of travel through this system? And that's a slightly stupid way of me putting it.
- [21:23]
Katherine Boland Erkele
No, I think there is definitely something to be said for that. And I do bring that up in the book too, where it's as you know, using the example of the immigrants kind of kept on the shoreline, kept separate, and then as they travel further into the country, they're incorporated into the building. And particularly with the railroads and their advertisements, they were really kind of, for lack of a better word, hell bent on getting the quote unquote, ideal American settler. And for them, that was a white Christian population who could work the land. A lot of these advertisements, there is one, a farmer who's actually plowing gold coins. It's an illustration of a farmer plowing gold coins from the field. So a not so subtle attempt at getting these immigrants. Look, if you could come here, you can make it. And I mean, that's the American promise that we've been told all along, right? And so they really targeted their campaigns, their promotional campaigns to these specific white Christian populations. And there's a lot to be said about that. But particularly for the railroads, they're looking to settle the lands that they were given through these land grants from the government. And these lands, of course, are indigenous lands that were either ceded or forcibly taken by the government and then given to the railroads. And so, you know, you have this notion of manifest destiny working in the background of, you know, trying to quote, unquote, settle these Lands with a new population, a white Christian population. And there are really extreme efforts by the railroads to do so. They tried to attract colonies, and in fact, they called it colonization schemes. At the time they were using that word. So I'm not just using it at acrylic anachronistically.
- [23:44]
Matthew Wells
And is the, is the. Are these companies as well, you know, through this, this colonization, are they, as well as laying the tracks and the land distributing part, are they. Are they involved in building the churches, building the houses and the farmsteads for these new settler settlers from Europe?
- [24:01]
Katherine Boland Erkele
Yeah. So part of the attraction for these certain areas, for the immigrants to travel specific railroad company lines and settle in certain towns, was that the railroads were offering land to build churches. They were offering temporary lodging houses that they would have a place to live while they settle, select their lands, start to build their own homes, they would have a place to live. So there were a lot of incentives offered by the railroads for people to come over. And they preferred people to come over in groups as colonies because that meant a much more stable settlement. You're selling a lot more land up front. You know, if you have individual settlers, the chances of them, maybe their farm doesn't work out, maybe they're having a hard time and they go back east. But if you have an entire settlement coming, purchasing this land and working as a community, the chances of that settlement thriving are very high. And once the settlement thrives, then that means more business for the railroads, of them shipping their goods along the railroads, the settlers purchasing things along the railroads, etc.
- [25:21]
Matthew Wells
And are they. Are there, what sort of materials? And, you know, is there, as well as the visual identity we talked about, about this extraordinary series of advertising, is there a kind of visual identity of the architecture? Is it. Does it have nods to, like, Norwegian vernacular architecture, or is it using the local materials of the. Of the American west, or.
- [25:43]
Katherine Boland Erkele
It's a combination. And definitely one of the interesting things about studying these settlements is looking at how these groups are incorporating their own architecture into it. So, for example, in Kansas, there's a town, Gustle, Kansas, that had a settlement, and they were using architecture that was derived from Dutch house barns, essentially, where the house and the barn are together in this triangular structure. And so there was a settlement. I'm blanking on the name right now, but there was a settlement who was using this structure. And in local journalists who visited at the time were actually writing about it in the papers. Like, what are these strange triangular buildings? And in one article, the journalist enters into the barn side of the building. And he says it's dark. And he's greeted with the ass of a horse just in his face. And he's like, what am I in? What's happening? And then they open the door at the other end and there's like this warm kitchen that everybody's waiting for them in. And so, you know, it was unusual for the people who were living here at the time, but it was perfectly common for these settlers to transport their architectural styles. And also in particularly in the Mennonite communities who the railroads really, really worked hard to get to come over to Nebraska and Kansas. They also brought over their kind of shared communal agricultural style where they would divide the land up in strips. And so that way each family was, you know, it wouldn't be that if one area of soil was particularly fertile that one family would get it. It was really divided among them so they could share the benefits and drawbacks of the soil. So there is this interesting cultural aspect where these towns, which are founded by specific groups, specific ethnic groups, are bringing over their own traditions.
- [28:05]
Matthew Wells
That's absolutely fascinating. Yeah, there's different. These different agriculture and the different types of settlement that must have emerged at different places. And if we follow Stevenson's journey to its kind of next stop or its final stop, we go to an urban. A much more urban environment in terms of San Francisco. And you talked at the beginning of the podcast a bit about the Angel Island Immigration center at the start of the 20th century. Could you talk a bit more about how this building's design demonstrates and displays kind of an architecture of exclusion to these immigrants that arriving from all across Asia?
- [28:39]
Katherine Boland Erkele
Yeah, Angel Island. So it built a little later, 1910, and it was built again on an island location. So Ellis island, on an island location, but very close to the shoreline. Angel island took a 45 minute ferry ride to get to. So it's further out. And then the other thing I like to point out is that the architecture of the building or the architecture on the island was on the northeastern side of the island. So it's away from San Francisco. So even if you're looking out, you're not seeing these buildings. It's a hilly island. So instead of having a monolithic structure like you have at Ellis island, you have smaller. It's a cottage plan. So there are smaller buildings arranged on the hillside. And the biggest thing for angel island was that they had these detention barracks where men and women were separated and then they were again separated by ethnicity. So Chinese would be in one area. Japanese, Korean. They did have a European Quarter, which was, I will note, a much nicer facility than the Asian quarters. But when you're looking at, you know, Ellis island, we can say, okay, it was built to facilitate movement. It is built as a sort of to focus on the inclusion of immigrants in the U.S. angel island is the opposite. It's built to prohibit movement into the country. And you have. Sorry, I. Sorry, I lost my train of thought. So angel island, you have. Oh, sorry. What I was going to say is that if you look at the numbers, so the number of people who were detained coming into angel island, detained for several days or more was about 70%. Ellis island, only about 20% of the people who came through were detained. And even then it wasn't for a long period of time. So at angel island, you do have people who are staying there for weeks, some even months. And it's incredibly disheartening to read the personal stories of the people who were kept there. And one of the really fascinating things about the building is that the immigrants, like, found this small way to resist the architecture that detained them by inscribing poems onto the walls that then the facilities managers covered over with plaster because they just treated it as graffiti. And they were uncovered later after the closure of the building and they're preserved today. And there's a wonderful publication that includes all of the poems that were written with English translations. And a lot of the people who inscribe these poems are talking about the physical building that they're contained in. You know, there was barbed wire fencing, there were guards watching their every move. They could only go outside for a half hour a day to be in the exercise yard. They slept on three tiered bunk beds. And even in the textiles, you have this racism come out where the government officials decided that they wouldn't purchase mattresses for all of the beds. And the commissioner at the time, Commissioner north said, oh, well, the Asians prefer to sleep on the ground, so we're not going to buy mattresses. And it's like, okay, a wooden platform where someone's sleeping is very different than this wire spring mattress. But again, there was no consultation with the Asian community about that. There's this man at the helm who then is realizing, oh well, if I don't have to purchase mattresses for over half the bunks, that saves us money. And so, and Ellis island, where she had this architectural competition where all these well known architectural firms are invited to do a design. Here you have Walter J. Matthews, who's not a well known architect, he wrote to the commissioner and asked for the job. And the commissioner said, sure, why not? There was no competition. It just, you know. And I haven't been able to determine if there was any prior relationship that they knew each other or something like that, but I've yet to determine that. But he just wanted the job and got it and did a terrible job. He was actually fired shortly after the construction or toward the end of the construction because his plans were just abysmal. There really wasn't any accommodation for things like sewage and water and things like that. So, you know, even in the construction of these facilities, you can see the disparity. And there's really always been this tension in America between inclusion and exclusion. And, you know, this myth of America as a nation of immigrants versus the reality of what immigrants actually experience.
- [34:07]
Matthew Wells
And did this manifest itself onshore in San Francisco as well? Was there other. You know, we talked about the Baltimore and Ohio Railway Company. It was this perfect processing, you know, almost of these different spaces. There's a guest house, a boarding house ready for them. Was this. Were these facilities lacking in San Francisco? Was it much more contingent?
- [34:28]
Katherine Boland Erkele
They were. A lot of the people who were coming into San Francisco then made their journey on their own. Whether they stayed or. There really wasn't as much of a network, I would say, to facilitate the movement of the people into the country. And even if you look at the immigrant trains in the Western United States, there was also a separate Chinese car on them. So among the immigrants, the Chinese were also segregated. And the location of the Chinese car was actually the closest one to the engine, which was mostly dangerous spot to be and also the most unpleasant spot because you're dealing with the smoke coming off of the engine. So, you know, you see that racism folds throughout the trains as well. And Stevenson wrote about that quite a bit, actually. And he said, you know, among the European immigrants, they viewed the Chinese as the dirtiest of them all and just all of these negative things. But Stevenson was like, actually, I'm observing them, and they're the cleanest of us all. They're the ones who are, like, bathing at every stop, you know, undressing to bathe. And he's like, we are disgusting. We're not doing anything. You know, he was in the bachelor car, so you can imagine the smells that were coming out of bed. But so he writes about that extensively as well.
- [36:05]
Matthew Wells
And on, you know, was there anything that. Whether it was from Stevenson or from. Or from other parts of your research that didn't quite fit into the book that you wanted to. That might become a new project or become something on the side that you or even, you know, something related to kind of interpretation and cultural heritage perhaps.
- [36:24]
Katherine Boland Erkele
Yeah. One of the things that never really got into the book and I didn't get to do as much research as I would like was especially in New York looking at the various immigrant shanty towns that developed Irish shanty towns, things like that. To look that's been a little harder to research because there's not, you know, these, none of these structures are extant and. But I haven't done too much work on that. But that would be a really interesting subject to explore. But also, I mean, you know, I'm writing about 19th, 20th century immigration in the US today and I don't know if I, I don't think I'm the person to do this, but the spaces, particularly along the U.S. mexico border, I think that is really a ripe area where we can look at the architecture built, you know, the so called wall, which is like a series of walls and more like detention like facilities and things, Alligator Alcatraz in Florida. You know, I think a lot of what I address in the book is readily applied to today and I think that's an area that can definitely be explored more. And to see how the built environment, these spaces of immigration in our contemporary society, what they're saying about American culture right now.
- [38:04]
Matthew Wells
It's a brilliant book. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast, Katherine. And just to remind everyone that the spaces and immigration, American ports, railways and settlements is out right now from University of Pittsburgh Press and in all good bookshops. Thank you so much Katherine.
- [38:19]
Katherine Boland Erkele
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