Why are the United Nations in New York anyway?
When you google “United Nations” you read: “The United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945. It is currently made up of 193 Member States. The mission and work of the United Nations are guided by the purposes and principles contained in its founding Charter.”
The United Nations, a replacement for the ineffective “League of Nations”, drafted its charter at a conference between April–June 1945 in San Francisco, and it was signed on 26 June 1945 at the conclusion of the conference. It took effect on 24 October 1945.
But why are they in Manhattan in New York? The General Assembly of the United Nations voted on the location of the U.N. in 1945. The European powers wanted to have them, of course, in Europe. Geneva was the frontrunner in this camp, but there was its association with the ill-fated League of Nations and the rest of Europe was still in ruins after World War II.
The United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, and Canada voted for a European headquarters. However, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Australia, China, Iran, and the Soviet Union voted for a fresh beginning in the United States, away from war ravaged regions. Perhaps, to the victor belongs the spoils, but it was a sensible decision. America suffered virtually no domestic damage from the war and would be a ‘neutral’ area, far from borders of conflict.
After the decision to site the U.N.’s headquarters in the United States, San Francisco and Philadelphia put in their bids, followed by Detroit, the Black Hills in South Dakota and Flushing, Queens in New York (Robert Moses- the grand municipal architect of NY, badly wanted it there). Manhattan was ostensibly a compromise solution after all other sites had been rejected.
An 18 acre (7 ha) site next to the East River in midtown became the U.N.’s home. Previously the site of slaughter houses (perhaps all the more poignant a site as it would now serve to avoid the mass slaughters of the past wars going forward), the land was purchased from NYC developer William Zeckendorf Sr. for $8.5 million (today $84.7 million) by the Rockefeller family.
The United Nations complex was designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer. Perhaps by fortunate circumstance, Wallace Harrison- the personal architect for the Rockefeller family and brother-in-law to a Rockefeller daughter, served as the Director of Planning for the United Nations Headquarters and his firm, Harrison and Abramovitz, oversaw the execution of the design.
It is curious how the founding and siting of this world body was so inextricably interwoven with the politics and big business of New York real estate dynasties, given that the new Trump- Kushner dynasties may well hold its fate in NY (and perhaps the world), in their hands.