Headquarters of the United Nations

This article refers to the physical offices of the United Nations in New York. For the organization itself, see United Nations.

40°44′58″N 73°58′5″W

United Nations headquarters in New York City, viewed from the East River. The Secretariat tower is on the left, with the Conference Building in front of it and the General Assembly building, with its sloping roof, to the right. A garden with sculptures is further to the right. The towers behind the garden are DC-1 and DC-2, which house several UN offices.

General Assembly building flanked by Secretariat tower at the United Nations headquarters

Secretariat tower at the United Nations headquarters, facade detail

The United Nations headquarters is a distinctive complex in New York City that has served as the headquarters of the United Nations since its completion in 1952. It is located in the Turtle Bay neighborhood, on the east side of Midtown Manhattan, on spacious grounds overlooking the East River. Though it is in New York City, the land occupied by the United Nations headquarters is "international territory" [1], and its borders are First Avenue west, East 42nd Street south, East 48th Street north and the East River east. FDR Drive passes underneath the Conference Building of the complex.

The complex includes three major buildings: the Secretariat (the 38-floor office tower), the General Assembly building (where all member nations of the United Nations meet in the United Nations General Assembly), and the Dag Hammarskjöld Library. A small, fourth building, the Conference Building, is situated between the General Assembly and Secretariat buildings, and can be seen only from FDR Drive or the East River. The complex is also notable for its gardens and outdoor sculptures.

It is sometimes incorrectly stated that the famous "beat their swords into plowshares" passage from the Book of Isaiah (Isaiah 2:4) is inscribed on a wall at the U.N. headquarters building. In fact, the inscribed Isaiah Wall is in Ralph Bunche Park, a New York City municipal park across the street from the U.N.

The United Nations headquarters buildings were constructed in New York City in 1949 and 1950 beside the East River, on seventeen acres of land purchased from the foremost New York real estate developer of the time, William Zeckendorf. This purchase was arranged by Nelson Rockefeller, after an initial offer of placing it on the Rockefeller family estate of Kykuit was rejected as being too isolated from Manhattan. The $8.5 million purchase was then funded by his father, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who donated it to the City. The lead architect for the building was the real estate firm of Wallace Harrison, the personal architectural adviser for the family.

International character

The land underneath the buildings remains the territory of the United States. However, the site of the United Nations headquarters has extraterritoriality status, typical of embassies.[2] This affects some law enforcement where UN rules override the laws of New York City, but does not give immunity to crimes that take place there. In addition, the United Nations Headquarters remains under the jurisdiction and laws of the United States, although a few members of the UN staff have diplomatic immunity and so cannot be prosecuted by local courts unless the diplomatic immunity is waived by the Secretary-General. In 2005, Secretary-General Kofi Annan waived the immunity of Benon Sevan, Aleksandr Yakovlev, and Vladimir Kuznetsov in relation to the Oil-for-Food Program. All have been charged in the US Federal Court of New York, except for Kofi Annan's own son, also implicated in the scandal. Benon Sevan later fled the US to Cyprus, while Aleksandr Yakovlev and Vladimir Kuznetsov decided to stand trial.

The complex has a street address of 760 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017, USA. For security reasons, all mail sent to this address is sterilized, so items that may be degraded should be sent by courier [3]. The United Nations Postal Administration issues stamps, which must be used on stamped mail sent from the building. Journalists, when reporting from the complex, will not use "New York" as the identification of their location in recognition of the extraterritoriality status. For example, Richard Roth is CNN's UN correspondent, while Ian Williams is his counterpart at The Nation [4], and Carola Hoyos is the UN correspondent for the Financial Times [5].

Proposed alternatives

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Portraits of former UN Secretaries-General in a hallway of the General Assembly building.

San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, and even the Black Hills of South Dakota were all proposed as sites for the United Nations headquarters before Manhattan was finally decided upon. It was later revealed that France, the UK and the Netherlands voted against situating the headquarters in the United States.[6]

In 1945-6 London hosted the first meeting of the General Assembly in Methodist Central Hall, and the Security Council in Church House. The third and sixth General Assembly sessions, in 1948 and 1951, met in the Palais de Chaillot in Paris.

For the first few years, the UN was headquartered at a temporary location in Lake Success, New York, an eastern suburb of New York City on Long Island. The Security Council has also held sessions on what was then the Bronx campus of Hunter College (now the site of Lehman College).

Prior to the choice of the site in New York City, Navy Island near Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada was proposed as an alternative headquarters for the United Nations.[7] An international committee pitched the site as the "World Peace Capital" over 1945 and 1946. The island was considered to be an ideal location as it lay on the boundary of two bordering countries of a peaceful status. It was proposed that Navy Island would be ceded to the United Nations as long as the headquarters remained, and to revert to the Canadian government should the UN move. The proposal was ultimately turned down in favor of the current site in New York City.

Since the Headquarters buildings are in need of repair, it has been suggested that a new temporary site be created at the old Lake Success location. Brooklyn has also been suggested as a temporary site.[8] Another alternative for a temporary headquarters or a new permanent facility is the World Trade Center site.[9]

Hugo Chávez has repeatedly suggested the headquarters be moved from its current location in an "imperialist nation" to his homeland, Venezuela. This proposal has no serious traction within the UN General Assembly or other areas of the organization.

Architecture

Interior of the General Assembly.

Rather than announce a competition for the design of the facilities for the headquarters, the UN decided to commission a collaborative effort among a multinational team of leading architects. American architect Wallace K. Harrison was named the director of planning, and a board of design consultants was nominated by member governments. The board consisted of N.D. Bassov of the Soviet Union, Gaston Brunfaut/Belgium, Ernest Cormier/Canada, Le Corbusier/France, Liang Ssu-cheng/China, Sven Markelius/Sweden, Oscar Niemeyer/Brazil, Howard Robertson/United Kingdom, G.A. Soilleux/Australia, and Julio Villamajo/Uruguay.

The committee considered 50 different designs before arriving at a decision. The basis for the final design was based on Le Corbusier's design, known as "scheme 23A."

Bound by such constraints as the East River Drive (later the Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive) and the East River, it became necessary to build a high-rise office building for the secretariat. The 38-story Secretariat Building was controversial in its time but became a modernist landmark. Its characteristic east-west walls were fully covered with thermopane glass designed to absorb heat from sunlight, except for air intakes on the 6th, 16th, 28th and 38th floors. The north-south walls are covered with Vermont marble.

Interior of the Security Council chambers.

Per an agreement with the New York City government, the buildings meet some but not all local fire safety and building codes.[10] The construction was financed by an interest-free loan of $65 million made by the United States government.

Renovation plans

In recent years, however, the headquarters buildings have come to need extensive renovation, including the need to install sprinklers, fix leaks, and remove asbestos. A renovation plan was announced in 2000 involving the building of a temporary headquarters on what is now a playground (Robert Moses Park) across the street from the current facility. Once renovations were finished, the temporary building would be used to ease overcrowding at the UN's DC-1 (1 United Nations Plaza) and DC-2 (2 United Nations Plaza) office buildings, providing more space for UN specialized agencies such as UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). However, due to the refusal of the federal and New York state governments to fund the project, little has been accomplished as of 2006. [11], [12], [13], [14], [15]

In art

Dating back to the first issues of 1951 the buildings have frequently appeared on United Nations postage stamps. The Marc Chagall stained glass wall was also the subject of a souvenir sheet in 1967.

A painting from the 1960's depicts a figure of Jesus that is about the same height as the Secretariat building, who knocks on the stained glass wall as if seeking entry.[16]

In fiction and film

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The UN symbol outside the gift shop in NYC

The building has a distinctive appearance in North by Northwest; a shot in the building's cavernous lobby was simulated through creative use of a matte painting.

The building is shown in the opening shot of the 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die, and the opening scene of an ambassador's assassination takes place in a simulation of the General Assembly room.

In The Pink Panther Strikes Again, the building is destroyed by a disintegrator ray.

Inside the HQ: rear portion of the General Assembly building's lobby. On the left is a display space that hosts traveling art exhibitions. Behind the blue wall on the right is the General Assembly hall.

The Art of War -- starring Wesley Snipes, Donald Sutherland, Anne Archer, and Michael Biehn -- details the activities of a UN covert operations force investigating the assassination of the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations. The climax of the film takes place in the Secretariat building.

Another film starring Wesley Snipes "U.S. Marshals" involves murder in the UN's underground parking garage and has Snipes rent an apartment across the street from the complex to keep tabs on a Chinese operative.

Brian De Palma's "Scarface" aborts a car bomb assassination that is meant to take place on 1st Avenue outside the gate when he shoots the remote control operating bomber in the face adding "You wouldn't listen, well look at you now".

The Interpreter -- released in the spring of 2005, directed by Sydney Pollack, and starring Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman -- was the first movie to be filmed inside the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council buildings. Some of the filming took place at night, when the buildings were not being used for official business, however other scenes were filmed during the day, such as the ones inside the General Assembly. Pollack felt that the movie could not be filmed any place but the real UN Headquarters.

In The Peacemaker, terrorists plotted to destroy the UN HQ by detonating a stolen Russian nuclear warhead.

Is featured in the black-and-white film noir, The Glass Wall. The building is the "glass wall" mentioned in the title.

Due to its international status, the United Nations Headquarters is often used as a symbol for the human race and the planet as a whole:

• The headquarters complex is a major setting in The Animatrix: The Second Renaissance, with key events in the film taking place in the General Assembly and the Security Council Chamber. Towards the end of the first part of the two-part film, the United Nations and their unwillingness to accept the mechanical nation of Zero-One as a charter member represents mankind's hostility towards the machines (who, at this point in the film, are peaceful). At the end of the film, the headquarters is destroyed by a small nuclear device hidden inside Zero-One's mechanical ambassador. In this role, the ruined Headquarters complex is used to represent the human civilizations of Earth, which collapse into ruins following the Man-Machine War.
• In the computer game Half-Life 2, the complex is shown on the front page of a newspaper during the Seven Hour War. In the photograph, the Headquarters complex is badly damaged and is under attack from Combine forces. In this case, the ruined and embattled Headquarters complex symbolically represents the whole planet, which is suffering the same fate during the brief war.
• In computer game SimCity 3000, the UN HQ is a landmark and can be built in any city.

See also

• United Nations Office at Geneva
• United Nations Office at Vienna
• United Nations Office at Nairobi

External links

• Agreement Establishing the UN headquarters (including information on its legal status)
• Information on public tours
• Google Map showing location of UN headquarters.
• Turner Learning overview of United Nations building
• New York Songlines information on the UN headquarters (information from 48th Street to 42nd Street on right side of page, some sites on left side of page)
• Building an International Headquarters in New York overview from UN 60th anniversary pages