United Nations Headquarters Secretariat Building looking North Vintage Postcard for Sale

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United Nations Headquarters Secretariat Building looking North Vintage Postcard For Sale

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United Nations Headquarters Secretariat Building looking North Vintage Postcard:
$7.99

P54010 UNITED NATIONS -- NATIONS UNIES

A view of United Nations Headquarters looking north. Shown are the Secretariat Building and the United Nations Library.

Published: Official United Nations, Office of Public Information.

405 East 42nd Street, New York, New York County, NY, 10017, USA.

760 United Nations Plaza, Manhattan, New York City, New York County, New York, US

The United Nations Secretariat carries out the day-to-day work of the UN as mandated by the General Assembly and the Organization\'s other main organs. The Secretary-General is the head of the Secretariat, which has tens of thousands of UN staff members working at duty stations all over the world. UN staff members are recruited internationally and locally, and work in duty stations and on peacekeeping missions. Serving the cause of peace in a violent world is a dangerous occupation. Since the founding of the United Nations, hundreds of brave men and women have given their lives in its service.

The Secretariat is organized along departmental lines, with each department or office having a distinct area of action and responsibility. Offices and departments coordinate with each other to ensure cohesion in the UN’s programme of work. Much of the UN Secretariat is located in New York City, USA. The UN also has three major Offices outside of its Headquarters and five Regional Economic Commissions.\" - Dag Hammarskjöld Library is a library on the grounds of the headquarters of the United Nations, located in the Turtle Bay/East Midtown neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is connected to the Secretariat and Conference buildings through ground level and underground corridors. It is named after Dag Hammarskjöld, the second Secretary-General of the United Nations. The library was founded in 1946, and the current library building was completed in 1961.

The library provides research and reference services to staff of the UN Secretariat as well as members of UN permanent missions. Additionally, the library is the main depository for United Nations documents and publications and maintains a selected collection of materials of the specialized agencies and United Nations affiliated bodies, as well as a collection of books, periodicals and other materials related to the organization\'s programs of activities. The library also produces a digital library of UN materials, an index to the proceedings and documentation of the major UN bodies, as well as providing research guides for finding UN-related material and information. The library also supports the network of UN libraries throughout the world by supporting collaborative information resource Library was founded along with the United Nations in 1946. It was originally called the United Nations Library, and later the United Nations International Library. Its creation was recommended by the 1945 report of the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations, which called for a \"library with research and reference facilities\" to be included in the Department Conference and General Services, now the Department of General Assembly Affairs and Conference Services.

Its responsibilities were further expanded upon in 1949 by the General Assembly, who decided that the primary function of the Library should be \"to enable the delegations, Secretariat and other official groups of the Organization to obtain...the library materials and information needed in the execution of their duties.\" The 1949 document also stipulated that the services of the Library would also be made available to the specialized agencies of the United Nations, as well as select members of the public, such as, international governmental organizations, educational institutions, scholars and writers.

A new library building for the UN headquarters was proposed in 1952. By that time, it was recognized that the existing UN library, a 6-story structure formerly owned by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), was too small. The NYCHA building could only hold 170,000 books, whereas the UN wanted to host at least 350,000 to 400,000 books in its library. The new facility was slated to cost $3 million. By 1955, the collection was housed in the Secretariat Building and held 250,000 volumes in \"every language of the world\", according to The New York Times. A 1959 report by Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld found that the building \"provides no further opportunity for expansion and prohibits the growth of the Library to that level which would seem commensurate with the fulfilment of its purposes.\"

In 1959, the Ford Foundation gave a grant of $6.2 million to the United Nations for the construction of a new Library building which would be \"of the highest quality, aesthetically designed, furnished, and equipped in conformity with the most modern library standards.\" In recognition of their donation, the General Assembly instructed the Secretary-General to place a memorial stone at the entrance of the library inscribed with \"Gift of the Ford Dag Hammarskjöld was instrumental in securing the funding for the new building. A letter from the President of the Ford Foundation to the President of the General Assembly after Hammarskjold\'s death stated that it was the late Secretary-General\'s active interest and lobbying in the project to fund a new United Nations library that was a decisive factor in the Foundation\'s donation. The new building was dedicated on November 16, 1961, just two months after Hammarskjöld\'s death, and was renamed in his honor.\" - Wikipedia

\"The headquarters of the United Nations (UN) is on 17 to 18 acres (6.9 to 7.3 ha) of grounds in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It borders First Avenue to the west, 42nd Street to the south, 48th Street to the north, and the East River to the east. Completed in 1952, the complex consists of several structures, including the Secretariat, Conference, and General Assembly buildings, and the Dag Hammarskjöld Library. The complex was designed by a board of architects led by Wallace Harrison and built by the architectural firm Harrison & Abramovitz, with final projects developed by Oscar Niemeyer and Le Corbusier. The term Turtle Bay is occasionally used as a metonym for the UN headquarters or for the United Nations as a whole.

The headquarters holds the seats of the principal organs of the UN, including the General Assembly and the Security Council, but excluding the International Court of Justice, which is seated in The Hague. The United Nations has three additional subsidiary regional headquarters, or headquarters districts. These were opened in Geneva (Switzerland) in 1946, Vienna (Austria) in 1980, and Nairobi (Kenya) in 1996. These adjunct offices help represent UN interests, facilitate diplomatic activities, and enjoy certain extraterritorial privileges, but do not contain the seats of major organs.

Although the structure is physically situated in the United States, the land occupied by the United Nations headquarters and the spaces of buildings that it rents are under the sole administration of the United Nations. They are technically extraterritorial through a treaty agreement with the U.S. government. However, in exchange for local police, fire protection, and other services, the United Nations agrees to acknowledge most local, state, and federal laws.

None of the United Nations\' 15 specialized agencies, such as UNESCO, are located at the headquarters. However, some autonomous subsidiary organs, such as UNICEF, are based at the UN\'s headquarters in New York City.

The headquarters of the United Nations occupies a site beside the East River between 42nd and 48th Streets, on between 17 and 18 acres (6.9 and 7.3 ha)[a] of land purchased from the real estate developer William Zeckendorf Sr. At the time, the site was part of Turtle Bay, which contained slaughterhouses and tenement buildings, as well as the original Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory and, by the 1910s, a gas company building on the site of the current UN headquarters. The development of Sutton Place and Beekman Place, north of the current UN site, came in the 1920s. A yacht club on the site was proposed in 1925, but it proved to be too expensive.

In 1946, Zeckendorf purchased the land with the intention to create a futuristic, self-contained city called \"X City\" on the site.[10] This complex was to contain an office building and a hotel, each 57 stories tall, and an entertainment complex between them. X City would have also had smaller apartment and office towers. However, the US$8.5 million ($86 million in 2023) for X City never materialized, and Nelson Rockefeller purchased an option for Zeckendorf\'s waterfront land in Turtle Bay. The purchase was funded by Nelson\'s father, John D. Rockefeller Jr. The Rockefeller family owned the Tudor City Apartments across First Avenue from the Zeckendorf site. The city, in turn, spent $5 million ($51 million in 2023) on clearing the land. Rockefeller donated the site to the UN in December 1946. The UN accepted this donation, despite the objections of several prominent architects such as Le Corbusier.\" - Wikipedia

This vintage postcard features a stunning view of the United Nations Headquarters Secretariat Building looking North. The postcard was manufactured in 1960 and is an original printed lithograph. The card is made of cardboard and paper, with a divided back and chrome features. The postcard is a single unit, with a standard size of 5.5 x 3.5 inches.
It is a great addition to any collection, with its unique depiction of the iconic building and its history. The postcard was published by the Official United Nations, Office of Public Information, and is a must-have for any fan of tourism, travel, landscapes, architecture, countries, famous places, secretariat building and the United Nations Library, social history, exhibitions, roadside America, and cities & towns.