UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS

New York City, completed 1953 On 26 June 1945, 50 nations founded the United Nations Organization in order to

establish international political consultations for the post-World War II period. In April 1946 the United Nations Secretariat and General Assembly officially replaced the League of Nations based in Geneva. After international diplomatic debates, New York City was chosen to host the United Nations Headquarters. New York’s influential city planner Robert Moses proposed to locate the United Nations buildings in a park at Flushing Meadows, Queens, on the site of the 1939 World’s Fair, but the businessman John D.Rockefeller offered to buy and donate to the United Nations a site in Manhattan between First Avenue and the East River and East 42nd and 48th Streets. Although this site had accommodated slaughterhouses, and despite the lack of building space for the suborganizations (for example, UNICEF), the Secretariat and General Assembly were placed there. Planning began in 1947, and the buildings were finished in 1953.