New York City: Turn-of-the-nineteenth-century development
At the same time, the emigration of Europe's impoverished peoples continued unabated, and in 1884 new immigrants from Asia settled in what became known as Chinatown ; Jewish and other European immigrants continued to arrive, and in 1898 the population of New York amounted to more than three million, making it the largest city in the world. Twelve years earlier the Statue of Liberty was completed, holding a symbolic torch to guide the huddled masses; now pressure grew to limit immigration, but still people flooded in. Ellis Island , the depot that processed arrivals, was handling two thousand people a day, leading to a total of ten million by 1929, when laws were passed to curtail immigration. The first two decades of the century saw a further wave of immigration. In that period one-third of all the Jews in eastern Europe arrived in New York, and upwards of 1.5 million of them settled in New York City, primarily in the Lower East Side.
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