| UNICEF Headquartres | |
|---|---|
.jpg) | |
 | |
| Former names | Three UN Plaza, |
| Hotel chain | Hilton Hotels |
| General information | |
| Type | Office |
| Architectural style | Post Modern |
| Address | 3 United Nations Plaza |
| Town or city | Manhattan, New York City |
| Country | United States |
| Coordinates | 40°45′02″N 73°58′09″W / 40.75056°N 73.96917°W |
| Current tenants | UNICEF |
| Completed | 1987 |
| Opened | One UN Plaza ― November 10, 1975 |
| Owner | UNDC and Millennium & Copthorne Hotels |
| Landlord | UNDC & Millennium & Copthorne Hotels |
| Height | |
| Height | One & Two UN Plaza 496 ft (151 m)—505 ft (154 m),[1][2] Three UN Plaza ? |
| Architectural | Post Modern |
| Technical details | |
| Material | steel (frame) |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect(s) | Kevin Roche & John Dinkeloo for One and Two UN Plaza; Kevin Roche for Three UN Plaza |
| Architecture firm | Roche-Dinkeloo |
| Website | |
| undc | |
| Designated | January 17, 2017[3] |
| Reference no. | 2588[3] |
| Designated entity | Interior: Lobby and Ambassador Grill |
Three UN Plaza
editThree UN Plaza is a mixed-use building in Turtle Bay, Manhattan that was designed for the United Nations by Kevin Roche. It is located across First Avenue from the UN headquarters in Midtown Manhattan of New York City. Three UN Plaza, or UNICEF Headquarters is on the southside of 44th Street. The United Nations Development Corporation or UNDC is a quasi-public institution that developed and presently operates One, Two, and Three UN Plaza. UNDC operates all of Three UN Plaza. As the name suggests, UNDC’s principal tenants are the United Nations, the UN Development Programme, UNICEF, and other missions to the UN. Three UN Plaza was built in 1986. UNICEF is its only tenant.
Three UN Plaza (also referred to as “Three”), which opened in 1987, is a 15-story office building located on the south side of 44th Street between First and Second Avenues, across from One and Two UN Plaza. It is next door to another landmark building, the Beaux-Arts Apartments. Three's property includes approximately 205,000 square feet of office space, with an adjacent public plaza of approximately 5,000 square feet. Three UN Plaza is leased exclusively to UNICEF for its world headquarters.[4] It was built in post modern design.
The properties of One, Two, and Three UN Plaza are located on the east side of Midtown Manhattan along the East River, in an area of Manhattan known as Turtle Bay. One, Two and Three UN Plaza are also adjacent to one of the most important buildings in the world: the United Nations. The buildings are also in the most important part of Manhattan.
"If Manhattan is the center of the city, midtown is the center of the center."
AIA Guide to NYC, p. 179
If Manhattan is the center of the city (of all five boroughs), then Midtown Manhattan is the center of the hub. "Here are most of the elements one expects to find in a city core: the major railroad and bus stations, the vast majority of hotel rooms, the biggest stores, the main public library and post office. All are located in Turtle Bay."[5]
Three UN Plaza
editThree UN Plaza, or known today as UNICEF World Headquarters, is a fifteen-story building on E. 44th St., that was designed by Roche-Dinkeloo and built 1984-1987. It was known as KRJDA Project number 8303 and has 230,000 square feet of office space.[2] The UNDC commissioned Roche-Dinkeloo to construct Three UN Plaza, the last of the three major buildings in the UN Plaza complex of buildings. Kevin Roche then headed the Roche-Dinkeloo team, as John Dinkeloo had died in 1981.[4] It was built to provide office space, a conference room and headquarters for the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, or UNICEF. The building is situated on the south side of 44th Street, across the street from One and Two UN Plaza. It stands in out-and-out contrast to both of its neighbors, One and Two UN Plaza, and its neighbor to the west, the Beaux-Arts Apartments. The Beaux-Arts Apartments neighbors are paired towers at 307 and 310 East 44th Street respectively, designed by Raymond Hood and Kenneth MacKenzie Murchison. Directly across the street on E. 44th Street are Towers One and Two and the hotel's lobby entrance.
.jpg)
Form and facade
editThree UN Plaza has a massive-appearing two-story stone base, which is lined by columns. On top of this is a thirteen-story-high facade that complements the Beaux-Arts Apartments. On top of that are two stories within its mansard roof. Within both floors under the mansard roof, the 14th and 15th, are twenty-nine apartments.[6] The facade consists of striped granite slabs horizontally placed, which alternated with light and dark granite (bands of pink and green granite) with windows of the same green reflective glass used for Towers I and II.[7]
The granite slabs were cut to varying thicknesses to complement the alternating bands of brick-and-glass on the Beaux-Arts Apartments.[6] Three UN Plaza is separated from the Beaux-Arts via a one-hundred-foot-wide courtyard which is lined with columns. The courtyard is entered beneath a skylight-capped double colonnade. Roche ensured that people would not mistake this building for another architect by framing the windows and cladding the roof with a pale greenish-blue metal to complement One and Two UN Plaza across the street. A twenty-foot high colonnade runs the full length of the site and knits the park and base of the building together. Tables, chairs, benches, trees, a stone wall and waterfall provide a quiet, relaxing atmosphere in Midtown Manhattan.[6] Goldberger had stated that Roche was now reverting to basic architecture, or backward-architecting, in that his use of metal and glass on Towers I and II.[1] Roche countered by saying that new developments in granite and stone had made it possible to consider that the cost was lower than metal and glass and was merely adapting to the times.[1] The property includes approximately 205,000 square feet of office space, with an adjacent public plaza of approximately 5,000 square feet. Three UN Plaza is leased exclusively to UNICEF as its world headquarters.[4]
Architects
editKevin Roche
editKevin Roche was the archetypal modernist and "member of an elite group of third generation modernist architects — James Stirling, Jorn Utzon and Robert Venturi — and is considered to be the most logical and systematic designer of the group. He and his partner John Dinkeloo of the firm KRJDA produced over a half-century of matchless creativity."[2]
Roche was born in Dublin, Ireland, during one of the most tumultuous periods in Irish history: the Irish Civil War. Eamon Roche, Kevin's father, had been jailed twice for "revolutionary activities."[1] Kevin was born during his father's second imprisonment.[1] After Eamon was released from prison, he moved his family far away from war-torn Dublin to the pastoral hamlet of Mitchelstown in southwestern Ireland. Situated at the foothills of the idyllic Galtee Mountain Range, Roche's upbringing was anything but typical. It was forged by Eamon's keen managerial oversight of the Mitchelstown Dairy Co-operative in which Kevin worked alongside his father: as dairy farmers. Eamon Roche successfully annexed all the surrounding dairy cooperatives, forging them into the largest in southwest Ireland.
_(28455067412).jpg)
Early Life
editRoche's father asked Kevin to design a warehouse to store the cheese that the dairy farms produced. Whether Eamon may have known that his son had a interest in architecture is not known, but this sentinel event, recalled by Kevin, came about by his immersion into reading a book by the English architect John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture.[1]
University and Early Career
editIn 1940, Kevin returned to his birth city Dublin to continue his interest in architecture at University College of Dublin, or UCD. His first architectural drawing was a pig enclosure comprised of concrete blocks.[8] Though initially trained in German Beaux Arts, this gave way to modernism and post-modernism interests. After graduating from UCD in 1945, Roche then made the circuit with practically every well-known modernist of architecture in the Western world.[1]
In 1945, after World War II ended, Roche went to work in the Merrion Square office of renowned Irish modernist Michael Scott, contributing to the Donnybrook bus garage. In 1946, encouraged by Michael Scott, Roche sought international adventure and left for post-war-torn London to work with the preeminent English modernists Jane Drew and her husband Maxwell Fry, who were friends of Scott. Roche then left for what he called a "ten-year pursuit of the world's top architects."[1] In 1948, Roche's attempt at furthering his education amongst the masters led him to Chicago, where he enrolled in the Illinois Institute of Technology or IIT on the city's South Side. There, he was mentored by two iconic Germans: modernist Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe and architect/urban planner Ludwig Hilberseimer.[1]
After one year at IIT, Roche did not have enough money to continue for a second year. Since he could not receive his master's without funds, he thought to put his architectural skills to practical use. In 1949 he moved to New York City and "badgered the UN Planning Office for a job."[1] He began working on the United Nations complex at the firm Harrison & Abramovitz and stayed on for eight months. During Christmas of 1950, he left to visit his family back in Ireland, but when he returned, his job had evaporated.[2]
Eero Saarinen & Associates, Michigan
editPenniless and uncertain of his future in the United states, Roche contemplated returning home to Ireland. But an architect in the UN, sympathetic to his plight, recommended he call the firm of Saarinen, Swanson, and Associates where the 83-year-old Eliel Saarinen still practiced in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The firm's famous father was complemented by the family's talent: second wife Loja, son (Eero) and daughter (Pipsan). The firm had said that Eero Saarinen would be going to New York to interview prospective candidates. After spending an evening at New York's famous Stork Club with an aspiring actress cousin from Ireland with an MGM expense account, Roche was unexpectedly called for an interview the following morning. Roche went to the interview, and as Saarinen was talking to him, Roche had fallen asleep. Roche recalls that when he awoke, Saarinen was still talking, and was nonetheless hired. He moved to Michigan and began working for the firm, which had undergone a name change, then known as Eero Saarinen and Associates (ESA).
"The office was quite disorganised...so I fell into the role of taking over the projects and organising them."
Kevin Roche – Architecture as Environment, Pelkonen 2011
After his father Eliel died, Eero moved up to assume directorship. It was there that Roche met Jane Claire Tuohy. They married after moving to Hamden, CT, and had five children. It is also where he met John Dinkeloo, who had recently left the architectural form of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill from Chicago. They became lifelong friends and business partners. Roche and Dinkeloo began working on the General Motors Technical Center and other major projects around the United States. After Eero Saarinen's untimely death 11 years later, both Roche and Dinkeloo stepped up to fill the orders of plans already in the works and were instrumental in concluding Saarinen's major projects. These included the Ford Foundation's Headquarters in New York City, the TWA Terminal at Idlewild Airport, and the St. Louis Gateway Arch.
Roche-Dinkeloo
edit"Architecture is a local language and a universal language. Ultimately, a great building touches both, so that artist, and common man, understand it without being conscious of it. It is interwoven. That is great architecture."
Kevin Roche, 1985
Later, Roche and Dinkeloo moved the practice to Hamden, Connecticut. Saarinen's firm morphed into Roche-Dinkeloo Associates or KRJDA. Today, the firm continues on as Roche Modern, where Roche's son, Eamon, is currently managing director. Thus, Roche and Dinkeloo laid the groundwork for the preeminent architectural firm which has been coined the "poster child architectural firm of corporate America."[9] Of the many accolades given to honor Roche — which includes as the Pritzker Prize and the AIA Gold Medal) — his most recent was designing the Convention Centre Dublin in his hometown of Dublin. Situated on the north bank of the River Liffey, it was completed while Roche was in his eighties. Roche's most important contributions to the field of architecture was to introduce a systems approach to architecture, utilizing research-based designs to incorporate the environment.[2] Roche might begin his design process by analyzing all the factors: circulation patterns, zoning laws, building codes, infrastructural requirements, traffic patterns, to name just a few.[2] His works might include a "skyscraper on stilts with a public plaza below, a sports arena with a garage on top, and an office building with an embedded garden are just some of his groundbreaking innovations."[2][9]
History of Turtle Bay
editTurtle Bay was referred to as Turtle Bay Farm by early settlers.[10] The farm was adjacent to the East River and by the mid-eighteenth century, Turtle Bay Farm extended from about 40th to 49th Street and from Third Avenue to the East River. The farm was named after a cove in Turtle Bay. The cove was given its name from the abundance of turtles in the slow-moving brackish water found along the East River. The cove was located off the East River from about 45th to 48th Streets. Turtle Cove was fed by a small stream that originated at approximately Second Avenue and 48th Street.[10][11] There was such an abundance of turtles in the cove that residents held a "turtle feast.".[10] Filled in for development purposes, the cove is now covered by the gardens of the northern (northeastern half along the East River) border of the United Nations grounds.[12] Eventually, Turtle Bay Farm was replaced by homes (along the northwestern half of Turtle Bay), riverfront industry, and shantytowns beginning from the mid-18th century. Historical records of the "Turtle Bay Gardens Historic District" which is a two-block area along the northwestern half of Turtle Bay (from East 48th to E. 49th Street, between Second and Third Avenues), describe the twenty homes that were built there. Notable people who have lived there include Katharine Hepburn (#244 E. 49th St.), Stephen Sondheim (#246 E. 49th St.),[12] and Tyrone Power.[11] However, these historical records also describe the not-so-notables of Turtle Bay. The outliers who lived there called it “Blood Alley,” as the once pristine Turtle Bay Farm and Turtle Cove had become slaughterhouses for their proximity to the cove and river.[12] After renovations in the 1920s, the area underwent a rapid building period, and the cove was filled in.[13]
Land Acquisition
editDuring 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 literally 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 6-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.[12]
John D. Rockefeller Jr. reached out to Zeckendorf. He proposed a lump sum cash offer of $ 8.5 million to Zeckendorf, who leaped at the opportunity. After a round of last-minute negotiations, Rockefeller then gifted it to the UN after “eleventh-hour negotiations" which enabled New York to win the bid over a consortium of local New York businessmen and the cities of Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, who were all leading contenders for the UN site at that time. The bid — negotiated by Zeckendorf between the Rockefellers and Mayor William O'Dwyer of New York City — was won. The group of New York businessmen (including Zeckendorf), who once planned the Turtle Bay site for their “private development,” lost after Rockefeller announced he would “give to the city of New York the land as a gift.” Mayor O'Dwyer gratefully accepted the gift from the Rockefellers and New York City became the future home of the UN. The Ford Foundation followed and contributed $ 6.2 million for the Dag Hammarskjold Library to be built along the southern border of the proposed UN site, as well as $ 6.5 million for a school chartered by the UN. Thus, the “Turtle Bay” area of land — from 42nd to 46th Streets, from the East River to 2nd Avenue — was destined to become the “Capital of the World.”
Zeckendorf would later develop Roosevelt Field Shopping Center in the center of Nassau County, which is today still the largest shopping mall on Long Island. The exit M2 off of the Meadowbrook State Parkway in East Garden City and Uniondale, Long Island continues as Zeckendorf Boulevard in his honor. The boulevard serves as the access point to the shopping mall from the parkway.
Planning
editAfter Roche's partner John Dinkeloo died, he undertook the last stage of the UN enclave buildings alone. The glass curtain wall of Towers One and Two are gone, along with the abstract shapes. Tower 3 is not at all, but 15 stories tall and made of granite, with a row of columns at its base, rectangular windows in its midsection, and a mansard roof at its top. "If 1 and 2 United Nations Plaza epitomized the utter sleekness of late modernism, 3 United Nations Plaza is the sort of building that cannot but be described by the term post-modern: it looks something like older buildings, it has ornamentation, and it has been designed to blend with rather than to stand aloof from its surroundings."[14] Some have questioned whether Roche went the more traditional route, and chose not to exploit "the dramatic possibilities in any urban setting."[14] Roche recognized that there "was a point beyond which the abstraction of the first two buildings that should not be pushed."[14]
Goldberger has said that 1 and 2 United Nations Plaza towers are "arguably the best glass buildings in Manhattan since the Seagram Building, and their utterly cool, self-assured abstraction set the tone for a generation of late-modern towers" and "should have his own identity."[14]
Critical Reception
edit"If 1 and 2 United Nations Plaza epitomized the utter sleekness of late modernism, 3 United Nations Plaza is the sort of building that cannot but be described by the term post-modern: it looks something like older buildings, it has ornamentation, and it has been designed to blend with rather than to stand aloof from its surroundings," wrote Goldberger in 1987 when it opened.[14] Goldberger was pleased with 3 United Nations Plaza, which is the third building in his trio of United Nations Plaza structures, but unlike the first two, "which are sleek abstractions of glass, this new one is a building that blends comfortably into its surroundings."[15]
Tower 3 is a graceful building that is integrated well with the streetscape of the south side of East 44th Street without directly imitating any of the buildings beside it. Tower 3 pays particular homage to the Beaux-Arts Apartments next door, the Art Moderne complex of 1930 by Kenneth Murchison and Robert Hood of Hood, Godley & Fouilhoux that is patterned in horizontal stripes of light and dark brown brick.[14] Roche has mimicked this by applying horizontal stripes of light and dark granite. The stripes do more than tie the new building to the Beaux-Arts.[14] however, they also create an energetic rhythm that serves as a strong visual counterpoint to the cool, distant abstraction of the glass facades across the street. The light-colored stone is set slightly in front of the darker granite, giving the building a richer texture and making it look 3-dimensional.[14]
The windows are framed in metal that has been painted a pale greenish-blue color, tying the building further to the tone of the glass of its predecessors across the street, and the two-story mansard section (which contains 29 small apartments for United Nations personnel) is sheathed in aluminum of the same color. There is a small plaza in what would otherwise be a vacant lot to the west of the new building, between it and the Beaux-Arts apartments. It is difficult to evaluate the plaza at this point since its furniture and plantings have not yet been fully installed. But the decision to extend the row of columns at the building's base off to the side of the tower to become a kind of formal gateway into the plaza is superb -this colonnade partially encloses the plaza and makes it a true outdoor room, not simply a leftover space off the sidewalk. The columns are "almost cartoonlike," states Goldberger, who describes the columns further as, "Pieces of granite forming a thin, abstracted version of a classical column have been attached to an inner shaft.[14]
"Tower 3 is tight, disciplined, and sensible. It brings the UNDC project to an impressive conclusion." ―Paul Goldberger
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Roche, Kevin; Dal Co, Francesco (1985). Kevin Roche (1st ed.). New York: Rizzoli International Publications. pp. 7–93. ISBN 0-8478-0680-4. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
When [my father] was released from jail he joined the dairy cooperative movement in a small town where he became an ambitious manager.
- ^ a b c d e f g Pelkonen, Eeva-Liisa; John-Alder, Kathleen; Stern, Robert Arthur Morton; Pantelidou, Olga; Sadighian, David (2011). Kevin Roche: architecture as environment. New Haven: Yale university press. pp. 9–58. ISBN 978-0-300-15223-4. Retrieved May 13, 2024.
- ^ a b Landmarks Preservation Commission 2017, p. 1.
- ^ a b c "UNICEF Headquarters New York, NY, USA". Kevin Roche-John Dinkeloo, Associates Archives. New Haven, CT: Kevin Roche-John Dinkeloo, Associates. Retrieved April 10, 2024.
- ^ White, Norval; Willensky, Elliot (2010). "1". AIA Guide to New York City (5th ed.). New York, New York: Three Rivers Press. p. 179. ISBN 9780195383867. Retrieved April 5, 2024.
Of the four principal activities that have traditionally sustained New York, two—nationwide corporations and the garment industry—are concentrated in midtown.
- ^ a b c Stern, Robert A. M.; Fishman, David; Tilove, Jacob (2006). New York 2000: architecture and urbanism between the Bicentennial and the Millennium. New York: Monacelli Press. pp. 402–405. ISBN 1580931774. Retrieved July 25, 2024.
...a thirteen-story high street-wall-defining facade that continued the cornice line established by its westerly neighbor, the southern of Raymond Hood and Kenneth Murchison's twin Beaux-Arts Apartments (1931) and a two-story mansard roof, within which were 29 apartments for UN personnel.
- ^ Salzano, Miabelle. "United Nations Plaza". ARCHITECT, the Journal of the American Institute of Architects. American Institute of Architects. Retrieved June 12, 2024.
Offices occupy the first twelve floors with two floors of apartments above. The building's structure is clad with bands of pink and green granite with windows of the same green reflective glass used for the Phase I and II towers. A twenty-foot high colonnade runs the full length of the site and knits the park and base of the building together. Tables, chairs, benches, trees, a stone wall, and waterfall provide a quiet, relaxing atmosphere in Midtown Manhattan.
- ^ "In Memoriam Kevin Roche: 1922 - 2019". University College Dublin. Dublin, Ireland: University College Dublin. March 4, 2019. Retrieved May 14, 2024.
The young Roche, years later as an architecture student at UCD in the mid-1940s, designed his first building: a piggery, shaped out of concrete blocks.
- ^ a b Kerr, Ron; Robinson, Sarah K.; Elliott, Carole (April 2, 2016). "Modernism, Postmodernism, and corporate power: historicizing the architectural typology of the corporate campus". Management & Organizational History. 11 (2): 123–146. doi:10.1080/17449359.2016.1141690. Retrieved June 8, 2024.
- ^ a b c "Turtle Bay Gardens Historic District" (PDF). National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service. July 21, 1983. Retrieved April 10, 2024.
- ^ a b Diamonstein-Spielvogel, Barbaralee (1993). The landmarks of New York II (2nd ed.). New York: H.N. Abrams. p. 430, 439, 441. ISBN 0-8109-3569-4. Retrieved May 15, 2024.
- ^ a b c d White, Norval; Willensky, Elliot (2010). "1". AIA Guide to New York City (5th ed.). New York, New York: Three Rivers Press. p. 302. ISBN 9780195383867. Retrieved April 5, 2024.
"Bucolic in the early 19th century, the area was invaded around 1850 by riverfront industry with shantytowns that were soon replaced by tenements.
- ^ Stern, Robert, A. M.; Mellins, Thomas; Fishman, David (1995). New York 1960: Architecture and Urbanism between the Second World War and the Bicentennial (1st ed.). New York, New York: The Monacelli Press, Inc. pp. 632–638. ISBN 3-8228-7741-7. Retrieved April 4, 2024.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ a b c d e f g h i Goldberger, Paul (November 29, 1987). "ARCHITECTURE VIEW; Kevin Roche Finishes a Trio And Changes His Tune". The New York Times Publishing. The New York Times. p. B 42. Retrieved July 31, 2024.
Now this pair of buildings has expanded to a trio, but with a startling difference. Across 44th Street, 3 United Nations Plaza - the final building in the grouping commissioned by the quasi-public United Nations Development Corporation to house expanded U.N. facilities - has just been finished, and Mr. Roche has changed his tune altogether.
- ^ Goldberger, Paul (December 27, 1987). "ARCHITECTURE VIEW: THE YEAR'S BEST; When the Tide Turned on Rampant Growth". The New York Times Publishing. The New York Times. p. B 34. Retrieved July 31, 2024.
So, too, with Kevin Roche's 3 United Nations Plaza on East 44th Street between First and Second Avenues, the third building in his trio of United Nations Plaza structures, but unlike the first two, which are sleek abstractions of glass, this new one is a building that blends comfortably into its surroundings.