United Nations General Assembly Building
48 1st Avenue | also 770 United Nations Plaza, 46 1st Avenue, 752 1st Avenue | United Nations | built 1952
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1947
A slaughterhouse operator asks to stay on the future UN site as demolition begins
The land on First Avenue that became the United Nations headquarters was still in use before the General Assembly Building rose there. By mid-1947 the project faced delay when a slaughterhouse operator on the lot asked to remain for several months. Demolition began that July, and Secretary-General Trygve Lie and the architects began looking at ways to trim the headquarters' cost.
“…a slaughterhouse operator on the site requested that it be allowed to stay for several months…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1948
Trygve Lie breaks ground on the UN's new Manhattan headquarters
Secretary-General Trygve Lie led the groundbreaking ceremony for the United Nations headquarters on its East River site on September 14, 1948. The General Assembly Building, designed under Wallace Harrison with an international board that included Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, was planned as the complex's curved, domed centerpiece. The hall would be dedicated barely four years later, in October 1952.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1952
The General Assembly meets for the first time in its new hall
Secretary-General Trygve Lie dedicated the General Assembly Building on October 10, 1952, and the Assembly opened its first session there four days later, on October 14. The hall, behind a curving marble shell with a shallow dome, seats about 1,800 people, with six seats for each delegation.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1953
Guided tours draw 250,000 visitors in six months
When the General Assembly Building was completed, the American Association for the United Nations began conducting guided public tours of the headquarters. They proved highly popular, drawing 250,000 guests during six months of 1953. Later that year Columbia University Press began running the bookshop in the building's basement.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1954
Belgium presents the Triumph of Peace tapestry, one of the largest ever woven
On October 8, 1954, Belgium's permanent representative, Ferdinand van Langenhove, presented the United Nations with Triumph of Peace, a tapestry designed by Peter Colfs. At 43 and a half by 28 and a half feet, it is among the largest tapestries ever woven, and 14 craftsmen worked on a loom built for it. Its center shows the Dove of Peace approaching the Fountain of Goodwill, and it is displayed at the delegates' entrance of the General Assembly building, on the north wall.
Source: un.org
- 1955
The Netherlands gives a 75-foot Foucault pendulum for the main lobby
The Netherlands presented a Foucault pendulum, a visible proof that the Earth rotates, to the United Nations in a ceremony in the public lobby of the General Assembly building; the gift is recorded as donated on December 7, 1955. Netherlands Foreign Minister Joseph Luns made the presentation and Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld accepted it. A 200-pound gold-plated sphere hangs on a steel wire, and an electromagnet keeps it swinging.
Source: un.org
- 1957
Brazil's Portinari murals War and Peace flank the delegates' lobby
Candido Portinari's War and Peace, a gift from Brazil recorded as donated on September 6, 1957, covers the east and west walls of the delegates' lobby, which sits on the building's ground floor. Each mural is two stories high, painted in oil on cedar plywood. Secretary-General Trygve Lie had asked every member state in the early 1950s for a work of art representing its culture, and Brazil commissioned Portinari and gave the work the theme of war and peace.
Source: un.org
- 1965
Pope Paul VI tells the General Assembly: war never again
On October 4, 1965, Paul VI became the first pope to visit the Americas, flying to New York for a 14-hour trip built around a speech to the General Assembly. In a 35-minute address on world peace he called for an end to war, then met President Lyndon B. Johnson at the Waldorf Astoria and said Mass at Yankee Stadium.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1971
Pablo Casals conducts the premiere of his Hymn to the United Nations, with words by W. H. Auden
On October 24, 1971, the 25th anniversary of the United Nations, Pablo Casals conducted the Orchestra of the Festival Casals in the first performance of his hymn at UN headquarters. Secretary-General U Thant, a friend of Casals, had brought together the cellist and W. H. Auden, who had never met. Auden wrote the words in three days, on the theme of peace in the Charter's preamble. The song was never formally adopted as an official anthem.
Source: Internet Archive
- 1979
The General Assembly Hall is enlarged to seat 182 delegations
As United Nations membership grew, the General Assembly Hall underwent a $26 million renovation between 1978 and 1979, designed by Harrison & Abramovitz and carried out by the Fuller Company. The project rewired the hall's floors and replaced its delegates' chairs. When the first phase finished in September 1979, the expanded hall could seat as many as 182 delegations.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1994
Nelson Mandela addresses the Assembly as South Africa's president
Nelson Mandela first spoke at the UN on June 22, 1990, shortly after his release from prison, before the Special Committee against Apartheid. On October 3, 1994, he returned to address the General Assembly as the elected president of a democratic South Africa, and he spoke to it again in September 1998.
Source: un.org
- 2005
The Interpreter becomes the first film shot inside UN headquarters
In 2005, The Interpreter became the first film actually shot inside United Nations headquarters, whereas earlier movies such as The Glass Wall (1953) and North by Northwest (1959) had only depicted the General Assembly Building from outside. Filming took place in 2004, and coverage of the shoot revisited how critics had received the building when it opened in 1952. The film gave audiences their first on-screen look inside the real Assembly Hall.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2013
The General Assembly Building closes for a renovation that reopens it in 2014
The building closed for renovation on May 31, 2013, and the General Assembly met in a temporary building on the North Lawn. Workers added air conditioning beneath the floor of the hall and monitors at the desks, replaced the ashtrays with audio speakers, and removed asbestos fireproofing and mercury. Fernand Leger's murals were restored. When it reopened in September 2014 it was the last structure at the headquarters brought up to city building codes.
“The General Assembly Building was closed for renovations on May 31, 2013.”
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
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