New York Harbor that contains a museum and former

Second immigration station
Design and construction
Following the fire, passenger arrivals were again processed at the Barge Office, which was soon unable to handle the large volume of immigrants.^{[85][105][106]} Within three days of the fire, the federal government made plans to build a new, fireproof immigration station.^[85][105] Legislation to rebuild the station was approved on June 30, 1897,^[107] and appropriations were made in mid-July.^[108] By September, the Treasury's Supervising Architect, James Knox Taylor, opened an architecture competition to rebuild the immigration station.^[108] The competition was the second to be conducted under the Tarsney Act of 1893, which had permitted private architects to design federal buildings, rather than government architects in the Supervising Architect's office.^{[99][109][110]} The contest rules specified that a "main building with annexes" and a "hospital building", both made of fireproof materials, should be part of each nomination.^[109] Furthermore, the buildings had to be able to host a daily average of 1,000 and maximum of 4,000 immigrants.^[111]

Second Ellis Island Immigration Station (opened 1900) as seen in 1905
Several prominent architectural firms filed proposals,^{[108][111][112]} and by December, it was announced that Edward Lippincott Tilton and William A. Boring had won the competition.^[99][113] Tilton and Boring's plan called for four new structures: a main building in the French Renaissance style, as well as the kitchen/laundry building, powerhouse, and the main hospital building.^{[108][112][114][115]} The plan also included the creation of a new island called island 2, upon which the hospital would be built, south of the existing island (now Ellis Island's north side).^[108][112] A construction contract was awarded to the R. H. Hood Company in August 1898, with the expectation that construction would be completed within a year,^{[116][117][118]} but the project encountered delays because of various obstacles and disagreements between the federal government and the Hood Company.^[116][119] A separate contract to build the 3.33-acre (1.35 ha) island 2 had to be approved by the War Department because it was in New Jersey's waters; that contract was completed in December 1898.^[120] The construction costs ultimately totaled $1.5 million.^[17]