History

In 1946, the United Nations (UN) were looking for a location for their new headquarters in New York. The original plan was to use the grounds of the 1939 World Fair in Flushing Meadow Park in Queens. But when a project known as X-City on Manhattan’s eastern border failed to materialize, John D. Rockefeller Jr. bought the 18 acre (7 ha) plot and donated it to the United Nations. This site was then used to build the UN’s headquarters. The whole area was converted into international territory and officially does not belong to the United States.

                                                                                             A brief background of X-city: By the 1910s it was the home of slaughterhouses, the Eberhard Faber pencil factory, and, right at 42nd Street, the New Amsterdam Gas Company.

In the 1920s, elite development along the East River overtook Beekman and Sutton Places, and in 1925 the architects Sloan & Robertson published a plan for a blocklong development with a residential tower and yacht club landing, apparently on part of what became the United Nations site. But in that period, such a wide swath was too difficult for a single developer to undertake.

In 1946, developer William Zeckendorf envisioned X-city for the United Nations Headquarters and proposed his plan to Nelson Rockefeller, grandson of John D. Rockefeller.

The design for the United Nations complex was drawn by an international committee of architects, the United Nations Board of Design. The most notable of the architects were Oscar Niemeyer, Le Corbusier and Wallace K. Harrison, who headed the board. Some renowned architects including Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius were excluded due to their historical links with Germany, the instigator of the Second World War.