New York Times F.Y.I.: The Immortal Duse

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Title

New York Times F.Y.I.: The Immortal Duse

Subject

United Nations.

Description

News item from the New York Times' F.Y.I. section written by Michael Pollack that refers to the use of room 786 of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel as the U.N.'s first headquarters, May 1, 2005.

Access Date: 2011-02-18

Creator

Pollack, Michael

Source

The New York Times

Publisher

The New York Times Company

Date

2005-05-01

Rights

The New York Times Company, 2005

Format

text | pdf

Language

English

Type

Text

Coverage

Waldorf-Astoria Hotel -- 1931-present

Text

The Transient U.N.

Q. With all the debate about the United Nations and the planned refurbishing of its East River site, I wondered where in the city the U.N. originally had its headquarters.

A. The agency's first headquarters was actually Room 786 at the Waldorf-Astoria. "It was there that A. H. Feller, general counsel of the United Nations, checked in on Feb. 19, 1946, with orders to find first a temporary home in New York, then a permanent one," A. M. Rosenthal wrote in The New York Times in 1996.

In 1946, the United Nations was all over the city. Sometimes it had several temporary sites, no single place being large enough. After the Waldorf, the United Nations used the Bronx campus of Hunter College, whose students had been shifted to Manhattan. The agency also made us of a boardroom at 630 Fifth Avenue, and the Henry Hudson Hotel at 353 West 57th Street, where the Security Council met. Later in the year, the United Nations moved out of Manhattan, and in October, the General Assembly convened in a refurbished skating rink in the former New York City Building at Flushing Meadows, Queens. The Secretariat set up in a former Sperry Gyroscope war plant in Nassau County.

The United Nations occupied its Turtle Bay headquarters in stages from 1950 to 1952.

Citation

Pollack, Michael, “New York Times F.Y.I.: The Immortal Duse,” Host to the World, accessed November 17, 2024, https://waldorfnewyorkcity.com/archive/items/show/360.