[ Music plays ] Siegel: What is now this gorgeous Liberty State Park was, back 50 years ago, an enormous, decaying industrial wasteland that had been abandoned.

Buehler: "Planet of the Apes" -- the ending, where all of a sudden you see the Statue of Liberty poking out of the sand.

When we first were exploring Jersey City, that's what it kind of seemed like 'cause there was the Statue of Liberty.

You can kind of see it over the ruins of New Jersey at the waterfront.

We saw just across the water Ellis Island literally a stone's throw away.

Narrator: They decided they just had to get there.

17-year-old photographer-explorers Phil Buehler and Steve Siegel rowed across to Ellis Island.

In 1974, it was the only way to get there.

What they found was an undisturbed, decaying ruin.

[ Music playing ] [ Music playing ] Siegel: It is a grand space.

Buehler: I'd never seen a picture of this hall, and it's pretty grand to kind of stumble upon.

It looked a lot like this, except the paint was peeling, the floors were covered with dust, and there were some old chairs and things lying around.

But it was big and empty, and this space is pretty much the way it looked.

The rest of the island was a total wreck, a lot of papers and mattresses and all sorts of things, but this room looked surprisingly similar.

Siegel: I gather that when the immigrants got off the boat, this is the first thing they saw as they came in.

So this was a very dramatic place.

A lot of emotions must have been felt very strongly.

This was the beginning of a new life right here.

[ Music playing ] Narrator: When they first arrived on the island, Phil and Steve took photographs of the ruins they found, but their real mission was to make a film.

[ Sea gulls squawking ] Buehler: Our high school didn't have any film equipment.

It was not something you taught, especially 16 millimeter.

There was an organization on the Lower East Side of Manhattan called Young Filmmakers Foundation's Film Club, and we were the kids coming in from Jersey to make documentaries.

They would show us how to edit or, you know, talk about what we were doing, but we were mostly on our own most of the time.

Narrator: The film they made about Ellis Island included the ruins, but also historical photographs and the voices of immigrants.

Keat: Most people did have to undergo a thorough examination.

They had to undress for this.

I do recall that someone looked at my eyes and into my ears and asked me to open my mouth and look to see if I had any kind of an infection.

Siegel: We were able to locate people who came through Ellis Island, and we were able to record lots of these interviews.

And it just seemed to work.

Potelsky: They separated me and my sister from the rest of my family because we had lice over us.

The ship wasn't very clean, you know?

And, uh, I was just frightened out of my wits.

Narrator: The hospital, isolation wards, and even a small morgue are on the south side of Ellis Island.

Nowadays, you can take a hardhat tour of the south side and see the series of murals created by the French artist and activist JR in 2014.

But when Phil and Steve were first here in 1974, these ruins had long been abandoned.

Buehler: It was just fascinating to us that there was this history in these abandoned places that nobody cared about.

[ Music playing ] The immigration station was really the north side, where you kind of got processed and went to New York.

But if you had a communicable disease, they'd isolate you here until you were cured.

And some of them had, like, a view of the Statue of Liberty, which must have been, like frustra-- crazy frustrating for an immigrant to be, like, so close.

There's the statue, but they can't go.

And they might actually be sent back.

And the fun thing about this room in particular is this mirror here that's still on the wall.

If you actually stand here, you can see the Statue of Liberty out that way, bouncing off the mirror.

Siegel: Well, the Statue of Liberty -- What can one say?

Everything has been said about it.

It's such a powerful and potent symbol worldwide.

Today, with the immigration debate raging, the statue, in a sense, has become even more potent.

And in some ways, it is almost a radical symbol, in my view, because it represents, at least to some people, the idea expressed in Emma Lazarus' poem of the golden door, the famous last lines of the poem -- "Give me your tired, your poor, "your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

[ Music playing ] Narrator: The high school seniors made an evocative film, and people noticed.

It won awards and still attracts attention.

It was one of the first selections for the New York Times' Op-Docs "Encore" series of short independent films that haven't been seen in decades.

For the teenaged Phil and Steve, the film was a turning point.

They realized that the visual power of the spectacular ruin was made even greater by its history.

Buehler: Sometimes I'll go to a place without knowing much of the history, and then I'll look up the history later.

Ellis Island was a little bit like that for me.

Now I know both sets of grandparents, the Italian ones and the German ones, came through Ellis Island.

My grandmother on the Italian side came in 1922.

If she decided to come two years later, she wouldn't have got in because the Immigration Act of 1924.

I wouldn't be here.

That's when they didn't want any more Italians, no more Poles, no more Italians, no more Jews from Eastern Europe, no more Chinese, no more Japanese.

Siegel: So, the golden door was slammed shut, and Ellis Island, ironically, in the last 30 years of its use, because it closed in 1954, was a deportation center.

Although it was architecturally significant, the power of the place is knowing the history and the context.

Buehler: This was so different and unique, and nobody had been photographing like this these abandoned places because they were inaccessible.

They're kind of scary a little bit.

But for us, it was just kind of beckoning.

And as you understand the history, it's almost like you're going in to rescue something.

Siegel: We've been friends for 50 years, through thick and thin, and we've made many films together.

We've gone on little photographic safaris together.

We've had some wonderful adventures.

One of our best -- probably the best -- is right here, right here in Ellis Island.

[ Music playing ] Narrator: Restoration began in the 1980s.

[ Air horn blares ] And now 3 to 4 million people visit Ellis Island every year.

It's a far cry from what Phil and Steve found in February 1974.

Buehler: No life preservers, no cellphones.

You know?

I didn't tell anybody where I was going.

And we came out here four times.

Siegel: "I have a rowboat.

Phil, let's do it."

Buehler: "I have my brother's car.

Let's strap it on the roof and go."

Siegel: "And so, whatever it takes, "we've got to make it here "because we're both interested in history, "we're both interested in adventures, "we're both interested in photography, and this has to be done."

Buehler: Two kids from Jersey.

There's no frontier out west.

The frontier is the New York waterfront.

This was quite the adventure.