Queens - A Patchwork Of Cultures

Queens: The World’s First Capitol

The Italians

The Japanese

A Home for Diversity

The Jews

The Koreans

Ticket to the World

The Latinos

The South Asians

A Queens Timeline

Ethnic Eats

Not For Publication

Closing

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Queens: The World’s First Capital

By David Oats

President Roosevelt’s dream of a United Nations was the first order of business in a war-weary world pulling itself together after World War II, the greatest conflict in human history. In San Francisco on Oct. 24, 1945, the charter of this new international organization was signed by 51 member nations. Eager not to repeat the isolationist mistake that doomed the League of Nations, President Harry S. Truman committed the American people to this peacekeeping body.

The infant United Nations needed a home, and the U.S., now at the pinnacle of world power, was selected as the host country. The mayor of New York at the time, William O’Dwyer, formed a committee of 12 prominent New Yorkers to prepare a proposal that would insure the selection of New York City as permanent headquarters of the world organization.

Robert Moses was named chairman of this committee, which included such notables as Nelson A. Rockefeller, former Roosevelt advisor and postmaster-general James Farley, New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger and former World’s Fair president Grover Whalen. After extensive research and planning, the panel issued their report. It was laid out inside an impressive book with sketches and designs for a magnificent world capitol, which the city would provide to the United Nations. The site they chose was Flushing Meadow.

The New York City Building from the 1939 World’s Fair was transformed into the United Nations.

“I believe that we have in Flushing Meadow Park in Queens,” Mayor O’Dwyer stated in his introduction to the report, “a very accessible site in every way suited to the present and future requirements of the United Nations for working space for the World Capitol in surroundings which insure protection from all unfavorable influences.”

The proposal offered to donate most of the central body of the park for U.N. use and future expansion. Architects’ renderings detailed huge structures for the various agencies of the organization surrounded by lagoons and amphitheaters. A residence for the Secretary General would be located on the site.

“I urge that those officials of the United Nations charged with the final responsibility for selecting the permanent site of the World Capitol give full and serious consideration to Flushing Meadow Park,” O’Dwyer said. “If they do, I believe that they will find nothing else comparable to it.”

On the strength of that proposal, Secretary General Trygve Lie and the U.N. chose New York City as the home for the world capitol. However, the donation by the Rockefeller family of over $8 million for the purchase of a property in the Turtle Bay section of Manhattan along First Avenue by the East River made that the permanent location. The architect who would design the permanent glass tower for the U.N. was Wallace K. Harrison, the man who had designed the Trylon and Perisphere a decade before.

Until the new structure was built, however, the United Nations still faced the immediate challenge of keeping peace in a still-fragile world. They would need a meeting place and they selected the New York City building in the park as that place. The world had returned to Flushing Meadows.

President Harry S. Truman addresses the United Nations in its temporary home at what is now the Queens Museum of Art.

Among those delegates to the first U.N. body were Adlai Stevenson, Dag Hammerskjold, Golda Meir, Andrei Gromyko and Eleanor Roosevelt who saw her late husband’s dream of a world peacekeeping organization come true at the very site in which he had envisioned it eight years before when FDR first visited the fairgrounds.
On the 23rd of October, Trygve Lie convened the first session of the General Assembly in the New York City Building. Robert Moses and Mayor Vincent Impelliteri handed over the keys of the building to the U.N.

“All nations large and small are represented here,” President Truman stated in his opening address. “This Assembly is the world’s supreme deliberative body. The highest obligation of this assembly is to speak for all mankind in such a way as to promote the unity of all members in behalf of a peace that will be lasting because it is founded upon justice. It must be everlasting. Swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, and nations shall not learn war anymore.”

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