To celebrate the UN’s 80th anniversary, our Visitors Services staff and Tour Guides spent a full day exploring historic UN sites around New York City.
On a cold and windy morning, we hopped into vans kindly provided by the UN transport team, imagined ourselves living in the 1940s, and headed to our first stop in the Bronx.
There, Mercedes Diez, Lehman College’s Director of Communications, and her Vice President, Richard Relkin, welcomed us with a wonderful VIP tour.
In early 1946, Hunter College’s Bronx campus, today known as Lehman College, briefly served as the first temporary headquarters of the United Nations.
Recently returned to the city after serving as a Navy training centre during the Second World War, the campus was transformed in just 15 days.
Two hundred workers converted the main gym into a modern Security Council Chamber and built a press area over a boarded-up swimming pool, complete with a media room. The New York Times even set up its office in the old hair-drying room.
The UN held its official opening session there on 25 March 1946, presided over by Dr. Quo Tai-chi of China.
US Secretary of State James Byrnes read President Truman’s message of welcome: “We are greatly honoured the United Nations has chosen a site in our country for its home. But there can be no home anywhere for the United Nations unless the United Nations remains united and continues to work together as they fought together for peace and for freedom.”
Journalists at the time recalled the magic of those early days: New York suddenly felt like “the very centre of the whole foreign world. In the cafeteria, you might find yourself sitting next to a Pakistani lawyer, a Peruvian judge, or a Chinese economist. You had to be an ice cube not to be excited!”
During this period, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) also met on campus, in Gillet Hall, where it created the Commission on Human Rights. In April 1946, Eleanor Roosevelt was elected as its first Chair.
The Sub-commission on the Status of Women was also established here and soon evolved into today’s Commission on the Status of Women.
The campus additionally hosted the first meeting of the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission in June 1946, tasked with proposing safeguards, promoting peaceful uses of atomic energy, and addressing the control and elimination of atomic weapons.
We left amazed by all the history around us; happy, inspired, and a bit more knowledgeable.
Many thanks to the Department of Operational Support's Archives and Records Management Section for their support and for providing important information about the UN's historical sites.
