Welcome to the United Nations"
For seventy years, the UN has invited the public to tour the headquarters, bringing an extraordinary number of visitors to Turtle Bay and shrinking the literal and figurative distance between the UN’s work and the world.
The Guided Tours Begin
Photo UN
Miami News, December 13, 1953
The wreckage of World War II demonstrated a need for a new order, one of deeper cooperation across borders. This vision led to the founding of the UN. The founders of the UN also believed that the fate of the Organization depended on the global public’s support. In 1945, they established the Department of Public Information, which would publish books, produce films, and liaise with the press.
The UN’s invitation to the public to enter the headquarters was part and parcel of this strategy to foster close relations with members of the public around the world. And so, as international civil servants set up their offices and diplomats attended the seventh session of the General Assembly in 1952, members of the public began touring the headquarters, snapping photos, and taking in the new global-governing body.
Brochure, Visitors’ Guide to the United Nations, 1955 [Dexter Fergie’s collection]
Abbie Krasne [Photo UN]
In the context of the post-World War II moment—as the memory of the humanitarian horrors remained fresh—support for the UN ran remarkably high. Abbie Krasne, an American guide who worked in the early 1950s, recalls that all of the guides were “fervent believers” in the UN.
Guided Tour Attendance Figures for the Month of April 1955 [Photo Archives]
The guided tour attracted a lot of visitors. Within the first year of the tour, the UN headquarters was averaging about 1,500 visitors per day. At the time, according to an American journalist, two of New York’s other famous attractions, the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, were each visited by about 200-300 people per day.
Come to the U.N., advertisement, Life, March 18, 1966
The purpose of inviting the public into the headquarters is captured in this advertisement that ran in American magazines in the mid-1960s. In the photograph, a smiling child watches diplomats from Mali, the United States, and Japan talking amicably to one another—in other words, the child glimpses the UN in action. Part of the caption reads: “Best of all are the things you feel.
In the buzzing of 3400 Secretariat employees and the 2000 representatives of 117 countries, hope is palpable. You realize that if nations are already cooperating, they can continue to cooperate; that if the UN hasn’t solved all the world’s problems in 20 years, at least it’s begun.”
5 millionth visitor, April 10, 1959 [Photo UN]
By the end of the 1950s, the tours took off in popularity. On April 10, 1959—after about seven years of the tour’s existence—the UN headquarters welcomed its five millionth visitor, Keiko Glenn, who came from Hawai’i. Five years later, on May 14, 1964, it welcomed the ten millionth visitor, Uno Laitinen, a factory worker from Detroit.
Photo UN
10 millionth visitor, May 14, 1964 [Photo UN]
The guides were to be exclusively young women. This meant that the one UN official that most visitors to the headquarters would interact with would be a woman—during an era when men greatly outnumbered women in the UN Secretariat’s professional positions (in 1949, for example, women occupied only 393 out of 1,678 professional positions in the Secretariat). Men were not able to serve as guides until 1977.
The Role of the AAUN
The tours were originally established and managed by the American Association of the United Nations, a US-based Organization devoted to promoting the UN to an American audience. Its work paved the path for today’s UN Visitor Centre.
Elizabeth F. Hitchcock to Trygve Lie, June 26, 1950 [Photo UN Archives]
Before the AAUN established the guided tour service in 1952, it had provided tours and briefings to the general public at the UN’s temporary headquarters at Lake Success (Long Island) and Flushing Meadows (Queens), from the late 1940s on.
Between November 1948 and June 1950, the AAUN handled almost one million visitors at the temporary headquarters.
Thanks to the AAUN’s public relations experience at the temporary headquarters and to the general assumption that the vast majority of visitors would be American, the UN contracted the AAUN to set up the tour service at the permanent headquarters.
Agreement between the United Nations and American Association for the UN, April 22, 1952 [Photo Un Archives]
Photo UN
Photo UN/VSS
The AAUN established the main route that guides walk along to this day. The photo on the left depicts a Swedish guide interpreting José Vela Zanetti’s mural “Mankind’s Struggle for a Lasting Peace” in 1954; the photo above on the right depicts a Brazilian guide doing the same thing 65 years later in 2019.
Secretary-General, Budget Estimates for the Financial Year 1955, November 16, 1954 [UN document]
The UN Department of Public Information took over the tours in 1955. According to the Secretary-General Dag Hammarskj?ld, the guided tours were a “vital” international service and therefore should not be managed by a national NGO.
Making the Headquarters Accessible to the Public
General Assembly ticket, no date [Dexter Fergie’s collection]
Although guided tours were the primary attraction for most visitors to the UN headquarters, a wide array of other activities pulled members of the public into the headquarters. The UN headquarters turned the intergovernmental Organization into something that the general public could experience, whether sending a postcard from the UN Postal Administration or having lunch in the Delegates Dining Lounge.
Many of the meetings of the General Assembly, Economic and Social Council, Security Council, and, before it suspended its activities in 1994, Trusteeship Council, have been open to the public. This policy of openness has given the members of the public a front-row seat to the UN’s handling of issues, ranging from decolonization to climate change.
Delegates Dining Room matchbook [Dexter Fergie’s collection]
Since the opening of the UN headquarters in 1952, the Delegates Dining Room has been a go-to for international fare in New York. Because so many top UN officials and diplomats dined there, a journalist reported in the 1950s, many members of the public “dawdle in the hope of seeing celebrities.”
Photo of Delegates Dining Room, January 1, 1957 [Photo UN]
An American school teacher and a British guide in the Gift Center, 1954 [Photo UN]
The UN gift shop was another attraction at the headquarters, where, in the early 1950s, visitors could browse and purchase handicrafts from around the world, including an Indonesian salad set ($3), a Kenyan warrior shield ($30), and an Indian silk scarf ($42.25). The shop contained, according to a travel writer at the time, “the most interesting inventory in New York.”
The UN Cooperative Gift Center, 1954 [Photo UN/MB]
Chris Shenk’s New York Tours, advertisement, in The Lancaster Sunday News (now LNP | LancasterOnline), Lancaster, PA, June 26, 1955.
The UN headquarters became a fixture for tourists visiting New York. Tour companies, such as the Pennsylvania-based Ridgeway Tours, began to include a visit to the UN headquarters in their New York itinerary soon after the permanent headquarters opened in 1952.
Postcard, July 18, 1965 [Dexter Fergie’s collection]
Postcards sent from the UN show that the UN headquarters became a popular choice for tourists. Ann, writing to the Barrs in California in 1965, included a UN tour, along with other New York favorites, including Broadway and Radio City Music Hall.