Hunter (now Lehman) in the New York borough of the Bronx was one of the initial temporary headquarters of the UN and the site of the first meeting of the UN Security Council on US soil on March 25, 1946.
Where else has the Security Council met outside of its current location?
Hunter College’s basketball gym was repurposed as a UN Security Council room in just three weeks. The journalists were housed in a renovated swimming pool. One of the first issues the Council debated was Iran.
Two current Lehman College employees hold a 1946 photograph of the UN Security Council that once occupied the college’s basketball court.
Listen to audio of the first Security Council meeting at Hunter College.
Hunter College was never large enough to house the UN staff needed to run the organization, not to mention delegates from the then 51 countries or Member States of the United Nations, so a new temporary headquarters was established in a World War II munitions factory in Lake Success on Long Island.
United Nations personnel arrive at Lake Success in October 1946.
In 1946 – as today – UN staff came from a multicultural and international background. Newspaper reports marveled at the uniqueness of seeing women in saris and men in traditional Thawb robes.
At Lake Success, meetings were recorded and broadcast globally, representing an unprecedented moment in the history of global broadcasting.
Eleanor Roosevelt (center) participates in a UN Radio debate on the International Bill of Rights.
UN Radio was established in 1946 and one of the first interviewed was Eleanor Roosevelt (center), an American delegate (and former First Lady of the United States) who was the driving force behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
World Radio Day is celebrated every February 13, the day United Nations Radio first went on air, 80 years ago this year.
Watch a UN video profile of Eleanor Roosevelt here.
A New York company is preparing to move the United Nations.
Soon the UN needed more space and an agreement was reached to hold General Assembly meetings at the former World’s Fair site in Flushing Meadows, in the New York borough of Queens. The Security Council and other UN activities remained in Lake Success.
It was cold and windy at Flushing Meadows, and it showed: delegates often wore coats indoors. An usher appeared in a quilted mandarin coat and Indian delegates added wool coats over their saris. A UN nurse was on hand to treat many colds, showing that even global diplomacy had to contend with the New York cold.
Despite the cold, Secretary-General Lie called the building and surrounding park a powerful symbol of the warmth of friendship between the United Nations and its host city.
Listen to Rula Hinedi, head of UN tours, talk about Flushing Meadows.
A skating rink became the General Assembly Hall, which met there until 1950, when the UN had expanded to 60 member states. (Today there are 193).
A UN staff member checks the nameplates of countries participating in the UN General Assembly in Flushing Meadow.
The logistics behind organizing international meetings on a scale never seen before fell to the staff of the UN Secretariat, the administrative and executive body of the UN that keeps the organization running.
Here, a UN staff member prepares plaques with the names of countries participating in a UN General Assembly meeting in Flushing Meadow.
United Nations press officers edit verbatim reports of UN meetings.
Behind the scenes, hundreds of communications and public relations officers worked to ensure that issues debated in the General Assembly and Security Council reached the widest possible audience. Press officers (pictured below) compiled verbatim reports of the meetings in English and French, the UN’s working languages, and then distributed them globally.
As the UN continued its work at Flushing Meadow, efforts to find a permanent location for the world body intensified.
UN Secretary General Trygve Lie (center) accepts a donation of $8.5 million in March 1947 for the purchase of land on the East River in Manhattan.
New York City faced competition from Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Fairfield County in the state of Connecticut, as well as Westchester County in the state of New York.
An $8.5 million donation from American industrialist and probably the richest man in the world at the time, John D. Rockefeller, secured the 17-acre site currently occupied by the UN headquarters on the East River in Manhattan.
Here then-UN Secretary General Trygve Lie (center) accepts the gift from John D Rockefeller Jr. (right) with New York City Mayor William O’Dwyer also present.
In 1947 work began on clearing the land for the construction of the UN Headquarters.
Work began to clean up the site, which 300 years earlier had been a tobacco field and which had recently served as a meat packing warehouse.
Workers wash after a day of construction at the UN headquarters in New York in 1947.
A UN Radio reporter visited the site and interviewed a passerby:
What fascinates you about watching this?
Viewer: I’m interested in these guys here digging a hole.
Reporter: What is your feeling as a New Yorker, as an American, as a person who belongs to one of the nations of the United Nations? What is your honest and sincere feeling about the whole thing?
Viewer: I think it’s quite wonderful. I think that if the United Nations works, it will be the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to us.
Reporter: I noticed that you qualified your statement. What do you think could make it not work?
Viewer: Only us, only the people.
Reporter: That’s the best response I’ve ever had.
Listen to the interview here.
The construction of the United Nations Headquarters in Manhattan, led by an international team of renowned architects, including Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, took about three years.
Staff began moving into the building in 1951 and when it was finally completed in 1952, there was office space for around 3,000 people.
A window cleaner perches precariously in a window on the First Avenue side of the United Nations headquarters building in 1951.
The UN’s relationship with New York City dates back 80 years, and historian Chris McNickle says he has “no doubt that the United Nations is where it needs to be.”
“New York City is the great immigrant city of the world. It’s a statement that the city makes that people from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, from all races, from all colors, from all creeds, from all religions, that we can all work together and get along, and I think that’s still true today.”
Listen to the conversation here.
The United States, a founding member of the UN, was a driving force behind the idea and physical implementation of the organization.
American Ambassador Warren R. Austin, chairman of the committee responsible for the development of the UN campus, said that “the United Nations is built on principles that will outlast the steel and stone of any structure. The United Nations stands, sustained by the law of God, as the principal man-made instrument for solving problems and unifying the peoples of the world.”