UN headquarters

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The UN headquarters on the East River (2014)
The secretariat high-rise is the trademark of the UN headquarters.

The United Nations Headquarters in New York City ( UN Headquarters for short ) is the main location and headquarters of the United Nations , located at the United Nations Plaza in Manhattan . The General Assembly , the Security Council and, alternately with Geneva, the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations meet here. It is also the seat of the UN Secretariat .

history

After the founding of the United Nations in 1945, its headquarters were initially in London . The foundation stone for the new UN headquarters in New York was laid on October 24, 1949. For this purpose, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. donated an approximately seven hectare former slaughterhouse site valued at 8.5 million dollars on the east bank of Manhattan , which was given the status of an international territory. The complex was designed by a group of well-known modern architects under the leadership of Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer . After the United States approved an interest-free loan for the construction, construction began. The building complex was completed in 1951, and the UN agency moved in the following year. The company Irving & Casson-AH Davenport Co. was responsible for parts of the interior . The most important buildings are the General Assembly, the conference building and the 39-storey (155 m) high-rise office building. In 1961 the facility was expanded to include the Dag Hammarskjöld library .

The building has been part of many feature films, the most famous being The Invisible Third by Alfred Hitchcock.

Capital Master Plan

Before the renovation work began in 2008, the entire building complex was in an extremely poor structural condition, as no modernization or renovation measures had been carried out since it opened, although these would have been necessary decades ago. In addition, there was asbestos in the building, causing concern for many employees about the associated health hazards. The United States, in particular, has historically stubbornly refused to provide adequate funding for modernization or refurbishment work. Since 2000 there have been specific plans for the overdue basic renovation, including funding commitments from UN members. These were, however , delayed for years by the probably politically motivated refusal of the city and state of New York to approve and partially finance an alternative quarter that had already been planned in detail. At the end of July 2007, the award of the work with an order volume of around one billion (as of July 2014 it was 2.13 billion) US dollars was finally announced to the Swedish construction company Skanska as general contractor . The alternative quarters are not used, instead there are temporary relocations to different buildings in the city area. The renovation work (“Capital Master Plan”) began in May 2008.

In addition to the UN headquarters, there are other official offices of the United Nations in Vienna , Geneva and Nairobi . 19 United Nations institutions with around 1000 employees are also located in Bonn .

See also

Web links

Commons : UN Headquarters  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/04/17/idUSN17331983 , accessed April 10, 2015
  2. United Nations: Yearbook of the United Nations. United Nations Publications, 2003, ISBN 978-9-211-00857-9 , p. 1404 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  3. Capital Master Plan fact sheet

Coordinates: 40 ° 44'59 "  N , 73 ° 58'3"  W.