Northern Shore
The Gates to a land of Opportunity
Purpose / Function
Northern Shore is, first and foremost, an immigration processing center. Not built for the few citizens that travel throughout the world, but for the deluge of refugees seeking employment and safe livelihoods in one of the only stable countries in the world. It processes nearly a hundred thousand immigrants a year, and still is not enough to accommodate the sheer number of people seeking a new life in Mira.
Northern Shore has also been used as a quarantine center during the Blue Fever Epidemic of the early 1900s. While this is in part due to the fact that the fever came with a group of immigrants, it is also because there is plenty of space to hold the ill, suitable medical facilities and, most importantly, it is a long distance from the rest of the city.
Alterations
The building has been altered and expanded several times over its short, twenty year history. The most drastic and most notable was a second Immigration hall to handle the sheer number of people entering the facility each day. The process was started shorty after the Blue Fever Epidemic and took five years to complete.
Several other additions have been made, including a school for children forced to stay long-term, to help them learn the language of Mira and its culture while their guardian recovers in the hospital. A New hospital wing was added after the Blue Fever Epidemic, and a ramp was added to the pier to assist those with mobility issues, although there was much grumbling about this particular addition.
Most recently a number of rooms have been adjusted to allow secondary screening rooms dedicated to testing mental acuity. While the council still holds that those who cannot read a basic scripture are not eligible to enter the country, or even show empathy at a picture of the burial of a beloved pet, the staff hypothesize that differences in culture or educational background are holding back far more people than need be. People who, for example, tend to have rabbits for lunch rather than as pets.
Architecture
The building was designed by the 'Architecture Artiste' Selene John De Germaine. Whose idea this was, no one is sure, because the last location you would expect to be designed in a 'modernic art' form is an immigration facility that requires more function than form. Still, the building is impressive nonetheless, and De Germaine seems to have had the foresight to plan for future additions to the building in the original blueprint. Foresight or preparations for future work, no one is sure.
Immigrants first exiting the ferries are greeted with the Immigration Hall, a grand, two-story building of brick and glass that shimmers in the weak daylight of Poartlind. The hall's floor is wide and open, lined with little ropes that zig-zag back and forth. There are large cages on each side of the hall to hold the luggage and personal possessions of the immigrants while they proceed through the inspection process. The immigrants are then led by ropes up large marble stairs to the Inspection platform where, after a very brief medical inspection, they proceed down a number of different hallways depending on where the inspection officer sends them. Some are sent to medical examination rooms, other to secondary questioning rooms, while the majority pass through a hallway to enter the back half of the building. These secondary rooms are often simple and plain, although recent attempts by the staff to spruce them up and make them less intimidating to Immigrants include small paintings or wall hangings. One wall in a interview room is adorned by a rather impressive coffee stain, although no one has confessed as of yet.
The back half of the hall breaks into several smaller lines at the bottom of another set of stairs. after another short line is an Immigration Processing officer, sitting at a small desk. Here paperwork is processed and inspected. Once this final barrier is passed, new citizens of Mira are greeted with a glorious stained-glass window of the country's crest, overlooking a small plaza and gardens where they can be met by hawkers, family members, or various aid societies looking to assist on their first steps in a new land.
Defenses
Northern Shore is not a building one would normally associate with 'defense'. Yet, at its core, that is what it is; a defense against foreign diseases, undesirable traits that Mira does not wish to see in its future citizens, and radical elements that refuse to leave the conflict of their countries behind them.
The first line of defense is the security officers stationed at Northern Shore. While they are there mostly to assist immigrants off the ferry boats onto the pier, they have been called upon on more than one occasion when a suspicious personage acts out or someone tries to stab someone else. These security men are not heavily armed, as most of the time they do not need to be. They are not meant to be an intimidating presence, just a necessary one.
The next line of defense are the inspection officers. It is their task to inspect every immigrant that comes through for a variety of diseases. While the immigration council has a very long list of what they consider 'undesirable elements', the Inspection team in general focuses on highly-infectious contagions or notable physical and mental disabilities.
The third and final defense is the Immigration officers themselves. While they look like men and women who simply process paperwork (Which they do), they also make sure that everyone who enters the country is exactly who they say they are and has no outstanding warrants in other countries. This is also the final catch point for people who may not necessarily be prepared to enter the country and have no place waiting for them once they leave the doors. Those that come in by the seat of their pants are directed to a side hall where they are introduced to one of the many aid societies looking to help immigrants enter the country, or if refused, are turned around and sent back to their point of origin.
History
Northern Shore was first conceptualized in 1896, as a response to the slowly-growing Immigrant demographic that was flooding the shores of Poartlind, and spreading across Mira in general. The project was kicked around various councils for years, until the Night of Falling Crowns and the collapse of countries across the Mortal Lands brought the project to the forefront. hundreds of thousands were suddenly flocking to the small kingdom for refuge, and it was becoming more than the country could handle.
Construction began in earnest under the direction of Queen Lydia in 1901, but due to lack of materials the project stalled until it was completed in 1903. The Facility opened with a main immigration hall and a small hospital wing, and was expanded several times over the intervening years as immigration numbers increased as more countries crumbled around them.
Today Northern Shore stands as a bastion of progress and change, while aslo a stalwart defense for everything that makes the kingdom of Mira what it is. It also stands on rather rickety supports; De Germaine did not factor in the mud of the riverbed eroding the piles when he first conceptualize his masterpiece, and the building now wants for a more stable footing, literally if not figuratively.
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