THE SECRETARIAT,
UNITED NATIONS
HEADQUARTERS
Although not located in the area that the "Builder" normally covers we feel that as this is the first building in the history of the world in which everyone in almost every country has an interest, we need offer no apology for the following short description.
The construction of this 40 storey building is now under way in New York City and is scheduled for completion in 1950. It will house the 4,200 internationally recruited members of the U.N. Staff.
Since December 1946 two groups of internationally famous architects and consulting engineers have been at work on the basic designing and planning. The planning office is headed by Wallace K. Harrison and on its Board has Robertson of Great Britain, Le Corbusier of France, Markelius of Sweden, Niemeyer of Brazil, Soilleux of Australia, Cormier of Canada, Vilamajo of Uruguay, Bassov of Russia, Liang of China.
The site covers 17 acres. The Secretariat Building itself will be approximately 500 ft. high, 300 ft. long and 72 feet wide.
This comparatively "thin", rectangular shape was selected to provide as many outside rooms as possible. To reduce the heat from the sun the 5,200 windows will be glazed with a special glass possessing the property of reducing the heat passed through the glass.
The wide east-west facades will be surfaced with blocks of black glass into which will be set the aluminium window frames. The overall effect will be that of a gigantic grid.
The windowless north-south ends of the building will be faced with 2,000 tons of Vermont marble.
The building is air-conditioned throughout and fitted with electric conveyors and pneumatic tubes to speed handling of records and mail, twenty-one high speed eleva- tors and eight glass-enclosed escalators.
Details of the elevators are as follows:-
3500 lbs. Capacity 800 ft. per min. 194 ft. travel
6 Passenger
6
3500
11
11
6
2 Service
1 Freight
3500 3500 12,000
1000 1200
+++
"
328 461
++
19
"
11
ย
"J
te
F
800 50
"
T
495 14
**
-
•
17
All
passenger elevators have Autotronic Control. Service elevators have Electronic Signal Control. "32R” Escalators will serve the lower floors of the building. The
General Assembly building will have six of these Escalators and nine Geared Signal Control elevators divided into three banks of two lifts each with a capacity of 3500 pounds at 250 f.p.m. for the delegates, one bank for the public of 5000 pounds at 200 f.p.m. and a private lift for the President of Assembly of 1200 pounds at 250 f.p.m.
The Meeting Hall will be equipped with three elevators, two of them Geared Signal Control of 2500 pounds at 250 f.p.m. and one plunger electric freight of 12,000 pounds at 50 f.p.m.
The Rockefeller Foundation donated land to the value of US$8,500,000 and the City of New York an additional $8,000,000 in land. The city also plans to spend $28,000,000 in improving the surrounding area. The cost of the whole group of U.N. buildings will be $65,000,000.
The air-conditioning, being installed by the Carrier Corporation, is on an interesting new principle. The old method of having one large central air-conditioning plant and circulating this conditioned air throughout the thou- sands of rooms, corridors and spaces in a large building was economical but never entirely successful. The new method is to have a central plant into which is drawn all outside air through filtered inlets. This central plant will humidify or dehumidify this outside air according to season, condition it to the proper temperature and distribute it through high pressure, small diameter steel pipes to 4,000 individual Carrier units.
These steel pipes are paralled by smaller pipes carry- ing chilled water in summer and hot water in winter to coils inside each unit. The air in each office will pass over these coils, and through simple controls on each unit it is possible for each individual office to select its own tempera- ture without affecting any other office.
There is a further advantage in that the high pressure pipes take up only a fraction of the space occupied by low pressure ducts.
The illustration shows the architects' sketch of the completed group of buildings in their setting.
The manufacturers of both the air-conditioning plant and the elevators have supplied many installations in Hong Kong through their direct representatives here, Mr. E. P. Stauder of St. George's Building for Carrier Inter- national Ltd. and Mr. Philip Kessel, c/o Dodwell & Co. Ltd., Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank Building for the Otis Elevator Company.
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