The seawalls that surround Ellis Island were constructed in the early 1900s and now show varying degrees of deterioration. The approach to the structural repair of the seawalls consisted of installing H-piles and ground anchors for stabilization of vertical and horizontal seawall movements. The H-piles were driven through the retained soils along the seawalls to top of rock. This paper presents ground vibration data collected simultaneously by four seismographs during driving of 40 piles (up to 100 ft depth) at various distances from the historical buildings. A correlation between the recorded PPV values and the distance to pile driving is presented. Also, a specific comparison between the measured attenuations from an instrumented pile with documented driving energy records and those recommended in published literature is presented. It was found that the vibrations induced by pile driving well exceeded the Peak Particle Velocity limits established in the project specifications and those commonly established in the literature. However, damage to the historical buildings was not significant
