The Museum of Immigration at Ellis Island tells the stories of the 12 million immigrants who entered the country through this portal, and whose descendants account for almost half of the American people, according to the museum’s website. There are several self-guided exhibits, including the “Peopling of America,” which explores migration between the 1550s and 1890, before the Ellis Island Era; “New Eras of Immigration,” exploring from 1954 to today; and the American Family Immigration Historic Center, where you can see passenger records of ships that landed at the island between 1820 and 1957.

Near Castle Clinton in Battery Park, south of Eisenhower Mall, a statue by sculptor Luis Sanguino honors migrants from different eras—including those who were forced to leave their home countries. “The Immigrants” sculpture features a priest, a worker, a freed African slave, and an Eastern European Jew. The statue is also dedicated to those who entered the country through Castle Clinton, which served as a “processing facility” from 1855 to 1890, before Ellis Island’s facility was completed. The sculpture was commissioned in the 1970s by Samuel Rudin and was installed in the ’80s.

St. George Tavern used to be St. George’s Syrian Catholic Church, one of the last remnants of what was known as Little Syria. Before the World Trade Center, the area known as the Lower West Side was “the center of Arab life” in the United States from the 1880s to the 1940s. Built in 1812, the terra-cotta Melkite church housed immigrants as a boarding house in the 1850s and 1860s, the Landmarks Preservation Commission designation report says. In 1869 it became a five-story building and continued to serve as a boarding house and later a tenement. In 1925, the Melkite parish bought the building, and Lebanese-American architect Harvey F. Cassab designed a new facade to convert the building into a church. The building became a NYC landmark in 2009.

The Eldridge Street Synagogue, a national landmark, was built by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and opened in 1887. Now, the building is home to the Museum at Eldridge Street, which tells the story of the Jewish migration to the Lower East Side through exhibits, tours, cultural events, and educational programs. According to the National Park Service, the synagogue is the “most important artifact of Eastern European Orthodox Judaism in America” and the first “great house of worship built by Eastern European Jews in the U.S.”

Today, there are nine Chinatowns in New York City, and according to the city’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, there are 365,885 Chinese immigrants in NYC. The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) was founded in 1980 to present and preserve the history and culture of people of Chinese descent in the U.S. Though its origins are humble, the museum has expanded to a Maya Lin-designed building on Centre Street with exhibits, events, and more.

Currently closed for renovations, the Italian American Museum, located in the heart of Little Italy, celebrates the legacy of Italians in the U.S. from the 1600s to today. The building where the museum has been located since 2007 used to house the Banca Stabile, a 19th-century bank that offered financial, postal, and communications services to Italian immigrants. Construction for the museum’s expansion began in 2018, and is expected to be completed in late 2020.

Created by sculptor Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (who also designed Riverside Park’s famed Joan of Arc statue), this bronze statute honors Cuban author José Julián Martí, who fought to liberate Cuba from Spain and escaped to New York in 1880. During his time here, he continued organizing for his country’s freedom, creating the Cuban Revolutionary Party in 1892. He returned to Cuba in 1895 at the start of its successful fight for independence. The piece is one of three statues of Latin American leaders in Central Park including Simón Bolívar, from Venezuela, and José de San Martín, from Argentina.

Founded in 1969, by artist Raphael Montañez Ortiz and a group of Puerto Rican activists and educators, El Museo celebrates the art and culture of Puerto Ricans and Latin Americans in the United States. (Even though their experiences are similar to those who migrate to the U.S., it is important to remember that Puerto Ricans are American citizens.) One of El Museo’s missions is to educate and promote Caribbean and Latin American art and culture, which it does through exhibits and special events—every year, for instance, it hosts the Three Kings Day parade.

Marcus Garvey was a civil rights activist, black nationalist, and leader of the Pan Africanism movement, aimed at unifying the African diaspora. After emigrating to New York from Jamaica, he settled in Harlem in 1916, after which he founded the Negro World newspaper and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which promoted “black economic self-sufficiency” and black-owned businesses, NYC Parks says. Garvey spent two years in prison as he was convicted of mail fraud in 1923, but president Calvin Coolidge commuted his sentence, and he was deported to Jamaica in 1927. Now, this Harlem park bears his name.