The UN Secretariat building with the illuminated sign “Thank you, New York.” So the leadership of the organization decided to thank the city for hosting the Millennium Summit. The city opens its doors to the world: New York and the UN UN
Born from the ashes of World War II, the dream of a more peaceful and more just world united nations in 1945 around a new vision for humanity: the United Nations.
The image of the UN today is inseparable from New York, which has become its home for many decades. The Hunter College complex in New York’s Bronx (now Lehman College) was one of the first temporary UN headquarters and the site of the first meeting of the UN Security Council on US soil on March 25, 1946.
The college’s basketball hall was converted into a meeting room for the Security Council in just three weeks. The journalists were housed in a converted swimming pool. One of the first issues the Council discussed was Iran.
Hunter College building in the Bronx in 1946.
Hunter College was not large enough to house all the UN personnel needed to run the organization, let alone the delegates from the 51 countries that were then members of the UN. Therefore, a new temporary headquarters was located on the site of a former World War II munitions plant in the community of Lake Success on Long Island.
At Lake Success, the proceedings were recorded and broadcast around the world, an unprecedented moment in the history of global broadcasting.
UN temporary headquarters in Lake Success.
UN Radio was created in 1946, and one of the first interviewees was Eleanor Roosevelt, the US delegate (and former First Lady of the United States) who was the driving force behind the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
World Radio Day is celebrated annually on February 13, since on this day in 1946 – 80 years ago – the first broadcast of UN Radio took place.
Eleanor Roosevelt in the UN Radio studio.
Soon the UN needed more space, and an agreement was reached to hold meetings of the General Assembly in the former World’s Fair pavilion in Flushing Meadows Park in the New York borough of Queens. The Security Council and other UN entities continued their work at Lake Success.
It was cold and windy in the exhibition pavilion – and it was noticeable: delegates often sat in coats and capes right in the meeting room. A UN nurse treated diplomats with colds.
Meeting of the UN General Assembly in Queens in 1947.
Despite the cold, Secretary-General Trygve Lie hailed the building and its surrounding park as a symbol of the warm friendship between the United Nations and its host city.
The ice arena was converted into a hall for the General Assembly, whose meetings were held there until 1950. By that time, the number of UN member states had increased to 60. (Today there are 193.)
The organization of international meetings on an unprecedented scale fell on the shoulders of the staff of the UN Secretariat, the administrative and executive body of the UN that ensures its daily work.
Behind the scenes, hundreds of communications and public relations specialists worked to ensure that meetings of the General Assembly and Security Council reached the widest possible audience. The reports were compiled by press officers in English and French, the working languages of the UN, and then distributed throughout the world.
While the UN continued to work in Queens, the Organization’s leadership was actively looking for a site for permanent headquarters.
New York competed with Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Fairfield County in Connecticut, and Westchester County in New York.
Construction of the UN headquarters in New York begins in 1947.
An $8.5 million donation from American industrialist and arguably the richest man in the world at the time, John D. Rockefeller, made it possible to purchase the 17-acre site on the banks of the East River in Manhattan, which today houses the UN headquarters.
300 years ago the site was a tobacco field, and then used as a warehouse for meat processing plants.
A UN Radio reporter visited the construction site and interviewed a random passerby.
– What attracts you most about this spectacle?
– It’s interesting for me to look at these guys below who are digging a hole.
– What are your feelings as a New Yorker, as an American, as a person belonging to one of the countries of the United Nations? What is your attitude to everything that is happening, to be honest and frank?
– I think this is just great. I think that if the United Nations works, it will be the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to us.
– I noticed that you made a reservation. What do you think could prevent this?
– Only ourselves, only people.
– This is the best answer I’ve ever received.
Workers at a construction site. The UN building took three years to construct.
The construction of the UN headquarters in Manhattan under the direction of an international team of famous architects, including Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, took about three years.
Employees began working in the building in 1951, and when construction was fully completed in 1952, 3 thousand people were housed there.
The UN’s relationship with New York goes back 80 years, and historian Chris McNickle says he has “no doubt that the United Nations is exactly where it should be.”
A worker cleans the windows of the UN headquarters building, 1951.
“New York is the greatest city of immigrants in the world. And this city kind of makes a statement: people from all walks of life, from all corners of the world, any race, any color, any creed, any religion can work together and get along with each other, and I think that remains true today,” McNickle emphasizes.
The United States, the founding state of the UN, played a key role both in putting forward the very idea of creating the organization and in its implementation.
US Ambassador Warren R. Austin, chairman of the committee responsible for designing the UN complex, said: “The United Nations is built on principles that will outlast the steel and stone of any structure. The United Nations stands, based on God’s law, as the main man-made means for solving problems and for uniting the peoples of the world.”