Headquarters of the United Nations However, the UN did reject an unusual "model playground" proposal for that site, instead choosing to construct a play area similar to others found around New York City. The first 450 UN employees started working at the Secretariat Building on August 22, 1950. The United Nations officially moved into the Secretariat Building on January 8, 1951, by which time 3,300 employees occupied the building. At the time, much of the Secretariat Building was still unfinished, and the bulk of the UN's operations still remained at Lake Success. A centralized phone-communications system, was built to facilitate communications within the complex. The
Headquarters of the United Nations as UNICEF, have their headquarters at the UNHQ. The headquarters of the United Nations occupies a site beside the East River, on between of land purchased from the real estate developer William Zeckendorf Sr. At the time, the site was part of Turtle Bay, which was filled with slaughterhouses and tenement buildings. By the 1910s, there was also a pencil factory and a gas company building in Turtle Bay, 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