Check Out These Vintage Photos of Immigrants Arriving on Ellis Island from 1892 and 1925

New York City is often considered one of the great immigrant cities of America, if not the great immigrant city in America.

For NYC, the history of Ellis Island has been wrapped into our identity for over a century.

It's no secret that laying eyes on the Statue of Liberty represents something special and important to those who passed through Ellis Island, and it still does for just about every American.

So now that the immigrants who entered through Ellis Island, those arriving on the East Coast between 1892 and 1954 have passed as their great grand children grow to adulthood, many of today's Americans are extra interested in their roots; "where they come from."

And it's somehow wrapped up into our seeming obsession with ethnicity these days, the impetus to celebrate cultural differences rather than homogenize them into one amorphous identity, the all too divisive measure of ancestral preservation.

Hence, the myth that is the melting pot-- we never really melted together; in fact, America's generally considered to be more of a salad bowl these days, with all kinds of people tossed in and shaken around, maybe with a low-fat dressing for good measure.

With all of that in our face all the time, we've strangely missed out in a big way on preserving, educating ourselves about, or even seeking to understand the lifestyle those who came through Ellis Island had-- in favor of funnel cake and Patrón.

So let's forget about all of that prideful, "Look at me, I came from people who had more difficulty in their lives than we do now and I somehow take credit for that" type of ethos.

Let's just look at some stunning portraits of people in their native clothing. as they entered Ellis Island.

Amateur photographer and professional chief registry clerk (1892-1925) at Ellis Island, Augustus Sherman, had a special interest in how people appeared when they arrived at the island, so he took special care to portrait lots of people in their native and traditional fashions, and good thing he did.

Now we have this amazing record of what people actually looked like as they arrived, before they had any chance to assimilate (willingly or not) into American culture.

Check out the European lineup below, who most people assumed all looked the same back in the day.

But that's simply not true. See for yourself below.