A HOUSE BECOMES A HOME

by Karin Sham Poo

When Jim Grant became UNICEF’s Executive Director, he thought that it would be good for UNICEF to have its own building. UNICEF was renting office space for most of its headquarters in the Alcoa Building on 48th Street and 1st Avenue and for the Greeting Card operation on 38th Street. In 1981, he proposed to the UNICEF Executive Board to buy a building in New York City for the headquarters offices. This took place a few years before I joined UNICEF so the person who knew more about UNICEF House, Timothy Boakes, is unfortunately no longer among us.

In 1984, the Executive Board authorized UNICEF to accept an offer from the United Nations Development Corporation to lease office space in the new UNDC III building on 44th Street which would be finished and ready for occupancy by late 1986 or early 1987. The lease agreement was for an initial period of 15 years, with an option to renew the lease for an additional 15 years period. The United Nations Development Corporation (UNDC) had been established by the state and the city of New York in 1968 to assist the United Nations and foreign missions to the United Nations with office accommodation and other facilities. They had already built UNDC I and UNDC II on 44th Street, which among others hosted UNDP and UN Plaza hotel.

The building that would be called UNICEF House, would have 15 floors with about 200,000 square feet of usable space. UNICEF would rent 13 floors while the two top floors would be apartments with a separate entrance. UNICEF had estimated in 1984 that the 13 floors would be more than adequate for its headquarters, and actually had planned to sublease out the 2nd and 3rd floors of the building at least for the first few years.

UNDC had offered UNICEF a credit facility of $ 4 million to furnish the building, but the UNICEF Executive Board did not agree to that. Many Board members stressed that UNICEF House should be a modest building reflecting UNICEF’s mandate and asked for a new proposal for furnishing and also wanted as much as possible for existing furniture to be used. Finally, an allocation of $ 2 million was approved by the Board. After taking stock of the furniture we had in the various offices in the Alcoa building, we found that while some of it could be used, others would not fit the layout in UNICEF House. For that reason, we had to go back to the Executive Board and ask for an additional allocation for the one-time installation costs of UNICEF House of $ 1.3 million. The Board reluctantly approved this request on the condition that as much as possible the funds had to come from existing resources. This meant that we had to find savings in other areas to offset this cost. We also managed to get a donation of furniture for the conference rooms in the building, including furniture for the Executive office .


As almost always happens with new constructions, the actual occupancy was delayed, but in August 1987, it was ready for us to move in. Timothy Boakes and his staff with some outside help including a moving company, had developed a detailed move plan. While UNICEF was not as computerized as today, the IT part of the move was also very critical. The relocation took place over three weekends, moving into four floors at a time. Everything that had to be moved, had to be labeled carefully with names, divisions, floors, etc.

Between 1984, when the lease was signed, and the move in 1987, the number of staff at Headquarters in New York had grown, and UNICEF ended up occupying the entire thirteen floors.

Those of you who have lived and worked in New York City, will know that almost no buildings have a 13th floor. The normal structure went from floor 12 to floor 14. In UNICEF House, it was different. Not only was the 13th floor called 13th floor, it would be where the Executive office including the Executive Director would be located.

After the first weekend move into the 2nd to 5th floors, Timothy Boakes and his team discovered something strange. The furniture did not exactly fit into each floor as planned. Timothy decided to have each floor in UNICEF House measured again and it turned out that the floors were slightly smaller in square feet than on the UNDC plan given to UNICEF. Since we paid rent per square foot, it meant that the lease agreement had to be amended, and UNICEF would pay slightly less in rent than anticipated, thanks to the very observant Timothy Boakes and his staff.

The rest of the move went well, and by the end of August we were all reasonably settled in UNICEF House.

Before we moved, Jim Grant had announced that he wanted UNICEF House to be a smoke-free environment. This was several years before smoke restrictions were approved in New York City in restaurants and offices. Jim Grant had two rooms in UNICEF House designated as smoking rooms. No smoking would be allowed in any offices or conference rooms. He also established various ways of support to those who wanted help to stop smoking. Being a smoker myself then, I went to one of the smoking rooms once, but could not stand all the cigarette smoke in the room. For me, and hopefully for others, this was a good way to reduce smoking, and to stop entirely, which I did in the early part of 1989.

In the lobby of UNICEF House, a Visitor’s Center was created. It had a shop run by the US Fund for UNICEF selling greeting cards and other objects, and another part had pictures and exhibitions about UNICEF and its history allowing people to come in and look around. It was decided that this visitor’s center would be named after Danny Kaye, UNICEF’s first Goodwill Ambassador. Unfortunately, Danny Kaye himself had passed away in early 1987, but his wife, Sylvia Fine Kaye, was able to attend the opening of the visitor’s center.

On the 13th floor, there is a large conference room that was used almost daily by the Executive Director and senior staff. That conference room was named after UNICEF’s first Executive Director, Maurice Pate. A smaller conference room on the 13th floor is named after Dr. Ludwik Rajchman, often called the founder of UNICEF and who served as the first Chairman of UNICEF's Executive Board. In the basement, was the main meeting hall, which was and is used for a variety of large meetings, including staff meetings. That hall was named after Henry Labouisse, the second Executive Director.

On June 18, 1996, as a part of the celebration of UNICEF 50th anniversary, during the annual Executive Board session, the plaza outside UNICEF House was dedicated to and named James P. Grant Plaza.

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