During the 1940s, a real estate developer named
William Zeckendorf began actively buying properties in Turtle Bay to construct or develop Turtle Bay. However, Zeckendorf was unsure as to what type of development he would be allowed to build by
New York City's Planning Commission or
New York's City Council. For that reason, he coined the term, "X City" since he had no idea what to build. Both the Planning Commission and New York's City Council are the two powerful organizations that determine the future of building sites in New York City as part of New York's
home-rule designation for municipalities. Both are required for a new building, which then needs approval from the at-the-time
Board of Estimate, all as important as the mayor's approval, the governor of New York State and New York State's legislature. But it wasn't until 1946 – after
World War II – that a six-square city block and the slaughterhouse area were razed. Then the
Third Avenue el train closed in 1955, which was the last of Manhattan's
el trains, and the 16-acre area known as Turtle Bay or X City was destined to become the
UN Plaza, headquartered at the
UN Secretariat, its
UN General Assembly and associated buildings. It also became the most fashionable place to live in New York City. The need for another apartment/building complex rose. Bronze hard-coated aluminum had been used by Harrison and Abramovitz for the window frames, doors, and stair railings for New York's
Lincoln Center Philharmonic Hall. This took place under the auspices of an organization initially known as the East River-Turtle Bay Fund, named for the area of land adjacent to both the East River and that section of Manhattan where the
United Nations Secretariat Building in Turtle Bay. A few months later it was renamed the Fund for Area Planning and Development.
December 1966 — East River Turtle Bay Fund After the UN Secretariat/General Assembly and the twin commercial/luxury apartments of UN Plaza had been built, it was up to the remainder of Turtle Bay's X City land to be developed. Secretary General U Thant requested the "drastic need" for office space which had been rented from nearby offices, and for a hotel, from the United Nations. He raised concerns that the United Nations Children's Fund and the United Nations Development Fund were severely affected by the shortage of office space and had been renting offices nearby. As a result, a cooperative agreement was formed in 1966, between the City of New York, the United States Government, and the United Nations. The linchpin was financial support from the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which became known as the East River-Turtle Bay Fund, Inc. It was established to specifically plan the land surrounding Turtle Bay and the United Nations to provide for: 1) office space; 2), a hotel and apartment complex for supporting the UN and its world-wide activities. The East River-Turtle Bay Fund was a combined civic and city cooperative organization that acted on behalf of the local Turtle Bay neighborhoods and of the United Nations. The fund was first headed by Schwarz, who was not new to this line of work. He had headed the building and planning commission for the Ford Foundation's headquarters building completed a year earlier. Since X City's land north of the UN had been already assigned for use, the fund's specific duty was charged with developing the three-acre area of land just south of the UN. The UN had deemed it ideal for extra office space and a UN hotel. The fund offered to pay for architectural and engineering expenses incurred. Recently elected New York mayor John Lindsey quickly endorsed the project. A preliminary proposal planned for construction platforms to be built over the FDR Drive and the FDR's car exit at 42nd Street, as well as land which was then occupied by a seven-story
Consolidated Edison-owned combined garage/office building at 708 First Avenue. This irregular, U-shaped 3-acre lot ran east from First Avenue to the East River, and south of 41st Street. The land was valued at that time between $12-million and $13 million. The parcel of land did not include Consolidated Edison's
Waterside Generating Station south of 40th Street. Comparatively, the five-times larger (16-acres) parcel of land destined to become the United Nations Headquarters, just north of the proposed building/hotel/office-complex, was gifted to the UN twenty-years earlier for $8.5-million (1946). The open end of the U-shaped lot faced west towards First Avenue, as it encompassed a large ventilation shaft for the
Queens-Midtown Tunnel. Its massive size and fixed nature precluded any attempt of relocating the ventilation shaft and therefore any proposed building/hotel/office-complex would need to be built around it. Vehicular traffic was projected to pass below the office building/hotel complex built on massive platforms. This proposal would include parks, tennis courts, and pedestrian walks extending to the East River. The plan would transform the neighborhood, from the mostly commercial warehouse buildings, garages, and lofts into a campus of parks and an office/hotel complex. There would be a dramatic twin-tower complex encompassing the land from 43rd Street to 45th Street, from First to Second Avenue, thereby eliminating 44th Street. UNDC called for the creation of a superblock, or a self-contained enclave bounded by First and Second Avenue, Forty-third and Forty-fifth Streets. The superblock would need to remove the existing landmark twin Beaux-Arts Apartments at 307 and 310 East Forty-fourth Street, except for the United States Mission to the UN on First Avenue. There would be twin forty-story towers on the same street, Forty-fourth Street, with a ring of eleven- to nineteen-story structures around the edge of the superblock. Each tower would be square in its footprint, but rotated 45 degrees off the street grid, to provide two millions square feet of space and one million square feet of office/apartment/hotel use. Both the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations each gave $100,000 to initiate the planning. The initial planning called for creating an unbroken park between 43rd and 45th Streets, "radically changing the existing traffic patterns along First Avenue. Virtually all through traffic would be eliminated to accomplish the joining of property on the west side of First Avenue with the United Nations enclave" and removing 44th Street from the map.
November 1968 Finally, the UN body itself — the delegation of the UN General Assembly — was sent a proposal by the Fund for Planning and Development, upon which the 155-member delegation would vote on the proposal. The addition of a park on
pilings or
piers eighty-five feet wide and stretching from north five blocks from 38th Street would include tennis courts, jogging and bicycling paths, a hockey/ice skating rink, and bocci courts. Also appointed to the UNDC was
Arthur J. Goldberg, the previous
US ambassador to the UN under
President Johnson; an
Associate Supreme Court justice and
Secretary of Labor under
President John F. Kennedy; and recipient of the
Presidential Medal of Freedom. Goldberg served during
World War II as a
captain in the
United States Army and the
Office of Strategic Services. The UNDC also included a list of bankers, realtors, attorneys, and city planners. One city planner was
Donald H. Elliott, Chairman of the City Planning Commission. Preliminary plans for the UN expansion project state that the Ford Foundation had begun the financing with a grant of $400,000 to the fund for Area Development and Planning. The Ford Foundation "began many months ago to quietly purchase properties in the two-block area to avoid sending prices soaring through speculation. the properties in turn were to be sold to the city at cost, to the corporation's planning".
April 1969 Opposition from the City Council, and Turtle Bay citizens complained that the secrecy of the project, with "two high towers, landscaped parks, offices, luxury apartments, a hotel and a United Nations Visitors Center" was hidden from the Turtle Bay Civic Association and Tudor City civic groups. The
Methodist Church at the Church Center of the UN voiced concerns that its secrecy only fostered more opposition. The grand plan, developed under the UNDC ― who were even taken aback by the proposal of three immense faceted towers all joined with a hotel wing ― were impressed.
Ada Louise Huxtable, architectural critic for the
New York Times, said that if the plan went to completion, the "building is a tour-de-force, a giant trick with mirrors." The Center will contain extensive tourist facilities, including bus docking, information centers, and restaurants, to ease the burden of the 2 million yearly visitors. There are three forty-story towers for the use of the UN missions and international organizations, bordering a glassed-in court. The buildings will be sheathed in the highly reflective glass first used by
Eero Saarinen & Associates' Bell Laboratories building, in Holmdel, New Jersey. Glass awnings will help unify the stores with the street, and glass-roofed entrance plazas would bring the life of the city into the new center.
December 1969 — third plan A month after the second revised Roche-Dinkeloo plan was submitted, the UN voted 62–10, to authorise approval of another 3rd plan on a 16-acre bloc from 41st to 42nd Street between First Avenue and the East River. It would be the first major building project to the UN enclave since the UN was built. This called for an $80-million project earmarked by the UN. Its Budgetary Committee agreed to stimulate the project with $25-million. Another 20-million was anticipated from the US delegation to the UN and agreed to ask Congress for the funds. Mayor Lindsay then promised he would ask New York City to match the 20-million, and to donate the land for the building site, valued at $10-million. The $15-million deficit would come from the UNDC's private funds and channels. Also voted on was the construction of a park to be built on platforms, and resting on pilings on the East River from 38th Street to 43rd Street. This new block proposal already contained
a park infrequently used by the community and the massive ventilation shaft of the Queens Midtown Tunnel. A new 8-story building would be built to accommodate the much-needed office space by the UN. The new 3-acre park to be built over the East River would accommodate both the public and UN personnel. Although the United States voted for the expansion project, it also voted to abstain from the Budgetary Committee's approval of a change in the text of the resolution introduced by France at the last minute. This change called for distributing UN activities between New York and Geneva, Switzerland (or some other city). The French proposal was viewed by the United States as an attempt to weaken the UN complex in New York City. The French maintained that if New York City was unable to meet the demands of the UN, then the UN should look elsewhere for expansion. Critics of this French proposal saw it as a further effort to undermine the united UN enclave in New York City by transferring economic and social activities overseas — possibly France. The proposal would come up for approval by the General Assembly, and the United States hoped to delete it before it went further. The US Missions warned that the French proposal would fragment the United Nations activities. Privately they hinted that it would be more difficult to secure congressional funding if Congress thought there might be a fragmenting of the US-based complex. Huxtable recounts the controversial 4-to-3 decision by the City Planning Commission, which still needed a final go-ahead by the Board of Estimate on March 12, 1970. real estate dollars. She states how ironic it would be that New Yorkers would be subsidising the structure but were offered no other option but the one presented by the UNDC. The city had been placed in an awkward position to accept the entire grand scheme, from beginning to end, or not at all. It was again stated that 600–800 housing units were going to be torn down, and only to relocate the angry residents and the city to have to pay for the relocation and new housing costs. The city had set aside $60 million for the construction of these apartments. The city had set aside $60 million for the Waterside complex, and a stand-by loan. Justice Murtagh, in a five-page ruling, said the plans by the UNDC and related city resolutions to enlarge the United Nations facilities were "not subject to review because they were legislative in character" and that the "UNDC was created by the State Legislature on May 31, 1968, to develop the expansion project between 43d and 45th Streets and First and Second Avenues". In other words, it was legally bound and the UNDC could not be discounted. The City Planning Commission and Board of Estimate then approved the required zoning amendments permitting the enlargement with Lindsay administration support. The lone holdout was Percy Sutton, Manhattan borough president.
November 1971 Up to this time, the plan for the mega -project had been scrapped, and Roche replaced it with the single tower idea. L. Thomas Appleby, the new UNDC president, predicted that the complex would bring the city a 10‐fold increase in annual tax income over the $75,000 that the property in the area now brings. Although the visitors' center would be tax‐exempt, he pointed out that visitors would spend unforeseen millions into the city. Appleby said that much-needed cash flow for New York City would come from the UN site, and that the UN had become a big business for New York City ever since Rockefeller bought the land for $8.5 million, and gifting it to New York City. In 1971, the UN had become the city's leading tourist attraction, drawing two million visitors a year from out of town and overseas. UN rental business and personal spending is another part of it. City authorities estimated that at least $135 million flowed annually into the economy as a result of spending by UN delegations and staff. The UN body itself was responsible for investing $500 million in United States bonds and blue‐chip stocks from 80 percent of the accumulated pension funds via UN staff members and related agencies. Local property taxes soared in Turtle Bay, even though the UN 16-acre site itself is tax‐free under the 1947 agreement between the United States Government and the UN. Appleby stated that the US government spends $86.3 million annually, Washington's largest single outlay for the UN to the United Nations Development Program where UN hoped to attract foreign investors to underdeveloped countries. This was seconded by the UN's Children's Fund and its outlay for rent. Both UNICEF and the UN Development Program were housed in commercial buildings and together the rent was close to $1 million annually. Threats to take these agencies overseas, primarily to Switzerland, encouraged further development of the UN enclave.
August 1972 By this time, the large $300-million plan was scrapped for a leaner, one-building model. The UNDC who announced the start of the first phase of the project expected that the $30‐million building would be opened by the spring of 1975. The 38‐story skyscraper included a hotel with 280 rooms, an enclosed rooftop tennis court, a 40‐foot pool, sauna, lounges, and a restaurant and meeting rooms for diplomats. The second floor would be taken up by a visitors center for the 2 million visitors annually who come to the United Nations. The street floor would have space for stores and a coffee shop, and open to visitors. A skyscraper to be constructed overlooking the United Nations will allow tenants to work. confer, live, eat shop, and swim without stepping outside the premises. Plans called for the construction of an enclosed bridge or crosswalk spanning First Avenue, which would connect the new building on the west side of the avenue with the United Nations property on the east side. The bridge was planned partly for convenience but mainly for a security feature.
1974 Vince Scully, an architectural critic for
Architectural Forum, stated that the large glass enclosure, much like a greenhouse, was possible because of the rubber gaskets that the glass panels were set in. Scully states how he was fascinated by the "streamlined massing and shiny spandrel bands of the enormously high glazed court, a testament to
Owen Williams, one of the first modernist architects to use glass facades.
Opposition and controversy An article appeared in the New York Times on April 12, 1968, that had taken many in the city and its government by surprise. In May 1968, after the project was announced, a brochure was printed describing the project and released to New Yorkers, apparently anticipating the fallout of public opposition. The majority leader of the City Council of New York and particularly residents of Tudor City feared that the Ford Foundation and the Rockefellers intended to buy their apartment complex to use the land for the UN expansion. The brochure which surfaced, and whose origin has been disputed, was purportedly published by the Fund for Area Planning and Development. "Few of the property owners in the area had even heard of the Fund for Area Planning and Development which had taken a small suite on 44th St. No name plate is visible from the street." In December 1969, the residents of Turtle Bay mounted a broad campaign to oppose the massive UN expansion plan presented earlier to the City Planning Commission. Protesters contended that since half the planned office space of 4.2-million sq. ft. in the four towers was to be used by the UN, it was a "land grab by real estate interests".
State Assemblyman Andrew Stein (future
Borough President and
City Council President) reverberated what Hamill had already suggested. He callously proposed that the UN development be moved to Welfare Island — once used for hospitals and city prisons, renamed Welfare Island in 1921 (present-day
Roosevelt Island), summing up his and his constituents' resentment succinctly. "You can read the UN Charter from end to end, and you will find
nothing that guarantees, to its personnel and officials the privilege of rolling out of bed, and directly going into their offices." Donald Elliott had come under intense scrutiny since he was a member of both the UNDC and the Planning Commission, an obvious conflict of interest, which became the focus of Pete Hamill's articles. Elliott denied the charges of a conflict of interest. He followed that up with a response to Hamill and Koch by producing a letter from the UNDC, which stated that the Chairman of the Planning commission must be a member of the UNDC, and as such, has approval of the city for his dual role. It was also speculated that Coleman, who had reservations over the plan from its inception, was eventually convinced by UNDC officials, Mayor Lindsay, and Arthur Goldberg to reconsider and pass the UN proposal. To finance the project, the UNDC would sell as much as $380 million in bonds. ==Critical reception==