United Nations Secretariat Building
headquarters building of the United Nations
The United Nations Secretariat Building is a skyscraper at the headquarters of the United Nations in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It contains the offices of the United Nations Secretariat, the executive organ of the United Nations (UN). The building, designed in the International Style, is 505 ft (154 m) tall with 39 above-ground stories. It was designed by a group of architects led by Wallace Harrison. Although the building is located within the United States, the site is under UN jurisdiction, so the building is exempt from some local regulations.
The Secretariat Building is designed as a rectangular slab measuring 72 by 287 ft (22 by 87 m); it is oriented from north to south and is connected with other UN headquarters buildings. The wider western and eastern elevations of the facade are glass curtain walls, while the narrower northern and southern elevations are made of marble. The Secretariat Building has 889,000 ft2 (82,600 m2) of space. There are press offices, staff rooms, and other functions on the lower stories. The Secretariat offices are placed on the upper stories, which were originally arranged in a modular layout.
“United Nations Secretariat Building” enters the record as headquarters building of the United Nations. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what United, Nations and Secretariat can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“United Nations Secretariat Building” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, United, Nations and Secretariat provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7888512. Authority coordinates are 40.749, -73.968. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “United Nations Secretariat Building”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow United Nations Secretariat Building primary sources, United Nations Secretariat Building archive and United research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “United Nations Secretariat Building”?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
- Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “United Nations Secretariat Building” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.