The United Nations Secretariat Building is a skyscraper at the headquarters of the United Nations in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It contains the offices of the United Nations Secretariat, the executive organ of the United Nations (UN). The building, designed in the International Style, is tall with 39 above-ground stories. It was designed by a group of architects led by Wallace Harrison. Although the building is located within the United States, the site is under UN jurisdiction, so the building is exempt from some local regulations.
The Secretariat Building is designed as a rectangular slab measuring ; it is oriented from north to south and is connected with other UN headquarters buildings. The wider western and eastern elevations of the facade are glass curtain walls, while the narrower northern and southern elevations are made of marble. The Secretariat Building has of space. There are press offices, staff rooms, and other functions on the lower stories. The Secretariat offices are placed on the upper stories, which were originally arranged in a modular layout. The building also features various pieces of artwork. The building's style has inspired the construction of other glass curtain wall buildings in Manhattan.
The design process for the United Nations headquarters formally began in February 1947, and a groundbreaking ceremony for the Secretariat Building occurred on September 14, 1948. Staff started moving into the building on August 21, 1950, and it was completed in June 1951. Within a decade, the Secretariat Building was overcrowded, prompting the UN to build additional office space nearby. The building started to deteriorate in the 1980s due to a lack of funding, worsened by the fact that it did not meet modern New York City building codes. UN officials considered renovating the building by the late 1990s, but the project was deferred for several years. The Secretariat Building was renovated starting in 2010 and reopened in phases from July to December 2012.
Site The Secretariat Building is part of the headquarters of the United Nations in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It occupies a land lot bounded by First Avenue to the west, 42nd Street to the south, the East River to the east, and 48th Street to the north. Although it is physically within the United States, the underlying land is under the jurisdiction of the United Nations (UN). The site is technically extraterritorial through a treaty agreement with the US government, though it is not a territory governed by the UN. Most local, state, and federal laws still apply within the UN headquarters. Due to the site's extraterritorial status, the headquarters buildings are not New York City designated landmarks, since such a designation falls under the purview of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.
The Secretariat Building is directly connected to the Conference Building (housing the Security Council) at its northeast and the Dag Hammarskjöld Library to the south. It is indirectly connected to the United Nations General Assembly Building to the north, via the Conference Building. West of the Secretariat Building is a circular pool with a decorative fountain in its center, as well as a sculpture executed in 1964 by British artist Barbara Hepworth in memory of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld. The Japanese Peace Bell is just north of the building, and a grove of sycamore trees is planted next to the Secretariat Building. On the western part of the site, along First Avenue, are the flags of the UN, its member states, and its observer states.
Outside of the UN headquarters, Robert Moses Playground is directly to the south, and Tudor City and the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice are to the west. In addition, One and Two United Nations Plaza (including the Millennium Hilton New York One UN Plaza hotel) are to the northwest. The building is physically isolated from other nearby structures, with the nearest New York City Subway station being several blocks away. Because of this, the Secretariat Building appears as a freestanding tower.
Historically, the site was part of a cove called Turtle Bay. The cove, located between what is now 45th and 48th Streets, was fed by a stream that ran from the present-day intersection of Second Avenue and 48th Street. A creek from the southern end of modern-day Central Park also drained into Turtle Bay. The first settlement on the site was a tobacco farm built in 1639. The site was developed with residences in the 19th century. Slaughterhouses operated on the eastern side of First Avenue for over a hundred years until the construction of the United Nations headquarters. The UN purchased the site in 1946 under the sole condition that it could never slaughter cattle on the land.
Architecture The Secretariat Building was designed in the International Style by a team of ten architects working under planning director Wallace K. Harrison. The Board of Design comprised Nikolai Bassov of the Soviet Union; Gaston Brunfaut of Belgium; Ernest Cormier of Canada; Le Corbusier of France; Liang Seu-cheng of China; Sven Markelius of Sweden; Oscar Niemeyer of Brazil; Howard Robertson of the United Kingdom; G. A. Soilleux of Australia; and Julio Vilamajó of Uruguay. Abel Sorenson was the interior designer. In addition, David Fine of United States Steel oversaw the construction of the Secretariat Building. The building houses the administrative functions of the UN, including day-to-day duties such as finance and translation. It contains three basement levels and 39 above-ground stories. When the building was completed, it was cited as measuring tall, although Emporis and The Skyscraper Center both cite the height as .
Form and facade
The building is designed as a rectangular slab measuring , with the longer axis oriented north–south. The Secretariat's architects wanted to design the massing as a slab without any setbacks. This contrasted with older buildings, such as those at the Rockefeller Center complex, which featured setbacks corresponding to the tops of their elevator banks.
The cornerstone of the UN headquarters was dedicated at the Secretariat Building in 1949. The cornerstone is a block of New Hampshire granite, weighing and measuring . The name of the United Nations is inscribed in English, Spanish, French, Russian, and Chinese, which at the time were the five official languages of the United Nations. The cornerstone was initially intended to be relocated to the General Assembly Building when that building was completed. UN officials ultimately decided to permanently affix the stone to a high pedestal next to the Secretariat Building.
Curtain walls The wider western and eastern elevations of the facade consist of glass curtain walls set within a metal grid. The Secretariat Building was the first skyscraper in New York City to use a glass curtain wall. The western and eastern elevations contain 5,400 windows in total. A total of of glass was used, a greater proportion than any other structure in the world at the time. The General Bronze Corporation manufactured and supplied the building with 5,400 individual windows, spandrel frames, louvers, and architectural metalwork. The original curtain wall was a single layer of blue-green glass that absorbed heat. The reflective glass was chosen mainly as a means to reduce heat on the western elevation, which absorbed most of the sunlight during a typical workday. The eastern elevation was clad in the same material for aesthetic reasons. General Bronze Corporation manufactured the windows to meet the specifications of Harrison's design: "a curtain wall cantilevered two feet, nine inches, in front of the steel structure so that it formed a flush skin of blue-green Thermopane heat-absorbing glass, painted black on the inner face." The modern facade, installed in 2010, is made of low emissivity glass that resembles the original facade. The modern curtain wall consists of two layers of glass panes, which are more resistant to shattering in case of a bombing.
When the building was completed, the curtain walls were cantilevered from the superstructure and were attached to the concrete floor slabs. Each of the original windows were aluminum sash windows, separated by aluminum mullions that projected slightly from the facade. The sash windows were compatible with conventional window cleaning equipment. The modern curtain walls are hung from the superstructure via outrigger plates, and there are projecting aluminum mullions similar to those on the original sash windows. The western and eastern elevations are each divided vertically into ten bays, each measuring wide. Within each bay are seven panels, each measuring wide and tall. Three of the old curtain-wall panels are preserved in the Museum of Modern Art.
Spandrel panels separate the windows on different stories. The inner faces of the spandrels are painted black, insulating the building while also giving the impression of depth. The curtain walls initially had weep holes, which were intended to prevent the windows from cracking. Most of the weep holes were plugged in 1952 and 1953 because the building's shape and its susceptibility to high winds frequently caused rainwater to leak into the building. Floors 6, 16, 28, and 39 house mechanical equipment and thus contain pipe galleries rather than glass panels. The facades of these mechanical stories consist of latticed panels, except on floor 39, where there is a mechanical penthouse behind an open-air grille. The architect Henry Stern Churchill wrote that the mechanical penthouse was "a very simple shape and could very well have been left visible".
Marble slabs The narrower northern and southern elevations are made of masonry clad with Vermont marble. These elevations rise as unbroken slabs and do not contain any openings. The building's steel superstructure, including steel bracing, was concealed within these marble slabs. According to Harrison, the marble walls not only allowed the Secretariat Building to be seen as a monument, but also reduced competition between staff members who wanted corner offices.
Structural features The foundation includes concrete piers that extend down to the underlying bedrock. Steel pilings are used at points where the bedrock is more than deep. The piles are installed in sets of 5 to 20 and range from deep. Each set of pilings is covered by a concrete cap. The building's structural loads are carried by an internal superstructure that includes about of steel. The columns of the superstructure are arranged in a 10×3 grid. The ten north–south bays are all wide, but the three west–east bays are all of different widths. The westernmost bay is wide; the central bay is wide; and the easternmost bay is wide. The narrow central bay was used as an elevator core. The floors are generally made of mesh and reinforced concrete, which is covered by either terrazzo, cement, asphalt-tile, or carpeting. Electrical and air ducts are placed underneath each floor slab. The interior partition walls are made of rough masonry, marble, plaster, glass, aluminum, or pointed steel.
Interior