The HAPAG shipping company had originally built emigrants’ accommodation on Amerikakai (America Quay) in 1892, but conditions there were poor, and the facility soon proved too small to cope with the steadily growing influx of emigrants. When, in 1898, site was reclaimed for the construction of waterfront sheds, HAPAG began constructing the Emigration Halls on the site occupied by the present-day BallinStadt Museum. The halls were built in stages from 1898 to 1907.

The new Emigration Halls were built on a 25,000 m2 (6-acre) site provided by the City of Hamburg on the Elbe River’s Veddel Island and formally opened on December 20, 1901. They comprised 15 buildings: a reception hall, five sleeping and living quarters, two hotels, a dining hall, church, music hall, administration building and basic hospital, as well as a luggage shed and a stable.

Only three years later, the facility had reached the limits of its capacity and required substantial extensions. The City leased HAPAG an additional 43,000 m2 (10.6 acres) at a price of 12,000 Reichsmarks per year and provided a further 6,000 m2 (1.5 acres) free of charge for quarantine barracks. HAPAG invested a total of around three million Reichsmarks in the construction of the Emigration Halls – including the extensions, which it referred to as “the world’s biggest inn”.

1947 the Emigration Halls were used as temporary homes for bombed out Hamburg citizens. Some of them stayed until the 1960’s, when the Emigration Halls were officially condemned as uninhabitable.

To the citizens of the Veddel Island, the remaining church was still a point of attraction. After the Lutheran church was destroyed in the war, the citizens were glad to have a church, where catholic as well as evangelic masses were held.  But 1962 all remaining buildings were torn down – except of one: Pavilion 13/14. For many years it served as a car workshop.

Beginning with the 1980’s until 2001 a Portuguese immigrant, named Belarmino Santos ran his restaurant “Bela Mar”. At least from time to time the Emigration Halls came back to life: Artistic searches for traces took place, which revealed interesting items and stories. The theatre “Am Strom”, the story-writing workshop from Wilhemsburg performed together with the Wilhemsburg High School a play called “Land in Sicht” (“Land in Sight”). The play performed in the old Emigration Halls appealed well to the visitors and was so successful that the staff went to New York, to perform their play on Ellis Island.

Meanwhile the Emigration Halls materialized more and more. In December 2004 the city of Hamburg decided to realize, in cooperation with the “LeisureWorkGroup GmbH” a corporation specialised on interactive worlds of experience – the “BallinStadt”.

Representing the performance the former Emigration Halls had the BallinStadt is a unique product of many creative ideas, advanced by people, working hard to give character to exhibition and to collect and record the hundreds of exhibition pieces and the touching personal stories.

The Hamburg Senate commissioned the “LeisureWorkGroup GmbH” from Hamburg to design a museum casting a modern light on the history of emigration.

To do so, one has to project one’s thoughts to the times of emigration. Feeling emigration instead of reading about emigration helped to tell lifelike stories about dreams and hopes rather than dull facts.

It was a challenge to always keep a certain distance and rating subjectively, but it felt like the challenge of emigrants to walk on uncertain ways.