He said, "O.K., but don't laugh. I'm taking my life in my hands going down there to do this."
The next day, Saturday, I received a call at home. "This is Pollock of the United Press, out at Lake Success. I want to verify something. Is it true that you've offered seventeen acres of Manhattan property to the United Nations?"
I said it was true and asked if there was much interest.
"Interest! There is a revolution! They are going wild down there in the assembly. Philadelphia is dead. In my opinion, they're going to accept." This was almost precisely twenty-four hours after I had first called Mayor O'Dwyer.
The UN-site offer was front-page news the next morning, and the UN was in turmoil as it tried to encompass this new development. I was in no way involved in the discussions. The mayor and his associates, the State Department, and the UN now had the ball. As it turned out, the key person in this mixed group was a superactive young man named Nelson Rockefeller, a member of the mayor's UN-site committee.
On Tuesday, December 10, Marion and I and Henry Sears and his wife were celebrating our anniversary and Henry's birthday at the Monte Carlo. Wallace Harrison walked in carrying a map of the East Side property. He was accompanied by Frank Jameson, the Rockefeller public-relations counsel, and a man from the State Department. Harrison announced, "The United Nations wants an option on the property."
"I gave it to them."
"But they want a price."
"I gave them that—anything they want to pay."
"Stop kidding around."
"This isn't kidding. Sit down, have a drink."
"What about the price?" Harrison asked.
"What do you want to know that for?"
"What did you pay for it?"
I said, "Six and a half million for the slaughterhouses, but the property now goes much farther north than that, right up to Forty-ninth Street."
"Slow down," he said. "Would you sell it for eight and a half million?"
I told him I would sell for two million or whatever they were willing to pay. Harrison asked me to give them an option for 8.5 million dollars, so I drew a line around the property on the map and said, "By the way, I'll throw in a present—fifteen thousand square feet on the north side of Forty-seventh Street, so it will force you to go at least as far north as Forty-eighth Street." I presented them with this extra land to persuade them to expand their lot northward as they should.
I'd had a lot of champagne by that time, but I had drawn the property line clearly, and I then wrote, "All the property within the boundary of this line is under option for thirty days to the United Nations." And I listed the blocks involved. I called Harry Sears over. "Is this O.K. with you, Harry?" He agreed; and I said, "Put your fist down."
Sears signed, I signed, and that's the only contract we ever had with the United Nations.
The next morning at 10:30, my head throbbing from the previous night's champagne, I was in my office but wishing I wasn't when the phone rang. The girl said Nelson Rockefeller was on the line. When I picked up the phone, Rockefeller's brisk voice crackled, "Is this Bill Zeckendorf?"
"Yes."
"We've been up all night patching up the details, but it's going to work. The old man is going to give that 8.5 million dollars to the UN, and they're going to take your property. See you soon. . . . Good-bye."
The property was being purchased! I couldn't believe it. I signaled our switchboard operator and told her to find out who it was that had called. She buzzed back to say it had indeed been Rockefeller. I gingerly put on my hat and carried my hangover home. As I came into the apartment, I told Marion, "We have just moved the capital of the world."
On Saturday, December 14, eight days after my first call to O'Dwyer, the General Assembly formally approved New York City as the site for United Nations headquarters.
Some of the basic ideas and details of the "X City" project came into being in the UN complex. In part this was because Wallace Harrison, in view of his connection with the Rockefellers and his excellent work on Rockefeller Center, was named a member of the international committee of architects that designed the UN. It was Harrison's opposite number Le Corbusier who, in my opinion, made the major contribution to the topside portion of the complex. In fact, sitting in my apartment and explaining what he felt was needed, Corbusier drew a prototype design of the UN on the back of an old envelope, which I kept.
However, my conception of an imposing, high-level platform running above First Avenue from Forty-first Street to Fiftieth Street ended up as a quite modest widening of First Avenue, with an underpass below this level. Similarly, the limitation of the northern property line at Forty-eighth Street robbed the UN of the grandeur it might have had—and of the additional space it would need later for expansion. Considering the many political, financial, and personal elements that were involved in arriving at the final designs, this meanness of purse and shortness of vision in the design of the UN can be understood and even forgiven. What ultimately evolved was attractive and workable. What is regrettable is the faulting of a proper approach to the UN, as well as a proper setting for its buildings. For this, as for so many other failures of civic vision, only we New Yorkers and our feud-happy politicians and administrators are to blame.
In order to get the UN to settle permanently in New York, the city administration, eager as a would-be lover, was at first willing to promise anything asked of it. The actual compact was arranged so hurriedly, however, that many items, such as the details of site planning, were left unspecified. Then, once the project was consummated, once the nuptial knot was tied, as it were, the city's ardor and willingness to please waned to near-indifference.
The first signs of this cooling on the part of the city were evident as early as March, 1947, when a UN spokesman chided the city for lack of boldness and vision in its share of the site planning. The city, in the person of Commissioner Moses, gave a soft reply, but paid no attention to these murmurs. And the true indicator of New York's valuation of the UN was the travesty of an approachway it eventually built on Forty-seventh Street. On the south side of Forty-seventh Street between First and Second avenues, the city carved out a half-block-deep slice of land. Forty-seventh Street was then "widened." South of Forty-seventh Street the city built a dark, narrow mall with dull, gray stones, lining its floor and walls. This drab vest-pocket park and bit of road were designated as the official approachway to the UN. The main vista for most of this "approach-way" consisted of the backsides of a series of tenements and factories on Forty-sixth Street. Today, if one does not entirely overlook the "approach," it is all too easy to recognize it for what it really is—a dreary drying-out place for the drunks scattered among the few benches, and a parking site for fume-spouting buses. An entranceway to the putative capital of the world it is not.
Distressed by the city's poor excuse of a plan, the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects proposed an approach plan, which was ignored. In July, 1947, with the blessing and backing of the AIA and of the UN, we at Webb & Knapp proposed a unified approach plan that did justice to, and in fact enhanced, the UN situation. What we proposed was the razing and redevelopment into one superblock of the land ranging north from Forty-sixth to Forty-ninth Street and west from the UN site to Third Avenue. North-south traffic on First and Second avenues would be overpassed, to create a giant mall that connected the UN to midtown New York. The buildings fronting on this mall would accommodate theaters, shops, offices, and apartments. In conjunction with the UN buildings, this approachway would have been one of the architectural jewels of the world. We know from Webb & Knapp's experience in Denver, Montreal, and Washington, D.C., that this approachway would have generated a great amount of business and tourist traffic. It would not only have been profitable in itself, but would have bought great revenues to the city. Most important, it would have upgraded and set new standards for the whole of what was then a seedy and uninspired east-midtown area.
But this great and exciting project was never t
o be. It collided and broke against the personality of one powerful man, Robert Moses, New York's Commissioner of Parks, City Construction Coordinator, Chairman of the Triborough Bridge Tunnel Authority, and wielder of vast funds and great influence in New York. Moses is the greatest public servant New York City has ever had, for he has been a builder of scope and imagination. I later worked with him on a number of projects. We became friends, and Moses is the kind of friend who stands by when lesser men have fled. However, Moses, like all men, has certain weaknesses. One blindspot, for instance, is his seemingly inherent inability, or great reluctance, to step beyond the design and building restrictions that were imposed upon the city by the previous generation's intoxication with grid-patterned streets. Another weakness centers on his natural but extensive pride of authorship. Our plan clashed with his on both these counts. I had a furious public and private battle with Moses over this approachway. He was then at the very peak of his power. As many a politician and errant businessman has sadly discovered, Moses is a past master at the art of civic war. I found myself and my motives distorted by Moses in his reports to the Board of Estimate, and was subject to consequent suspicious inquiries in the press. To the editors of The New York Times (which kept its reporting objectively biased in his favor), Moses was in those days sacrosanct, a demigod who could do no wrong, while I was branded as a suspect witness. Try though we might, my allies and I could never effectively get our message across to enough key citizens to change an essentially political decision.
Moses won the battle between us by sheer, brute force. I say brute force because he twisted the mayor's arm, but the mayor's arm was available for the twisting, and that is where I was caught by surprise. I was sophisticated enough to know that you don't often get things done by fighting in the newspapers. Like many a businessman about town, I was aware that presentations and arguments before the Board of Estimate or meeting of councilmen are often only the decorative topping to decisions and understandings that have been previously worked out. But I stepped willingly into this particular power play because I thought the situation was still fluid and because I thought we had Mayor O'Dwyer's backing. In fact, we did have such backing right down to the end. Then the mayor turned on us.
The mayor had agreed to my coming down to City Hall with a three-dimensional model of our approach plan to make a presentation at a special hearing of the Board of Estimate. After great difficulties in getting the model, which covered several tables, through the crowded corridors and past various official guards to the doors of the main chamber, we found we would not be allowed to display it. Then, when I stepped into the chamber to testify, O'Dwyer looked over at me and snapped, "What do you want?" From his tone I realized that this was not an ally; this was someone who was against me, and I thought, "What the devil has happened to O'Dwyer?"
O'Dwyer, a handsome, genial man with the drive and skill to work his way up from police patrolman to a seat of high power in the city, was a product of Tammany politics. He represented the best and worst of that organization. Shrewd, charming on most occasions, he could be as harsh and hard as a Seventh Avenue creditor when it pleased him. He had flair and a good deal of imagination, but, as I was learning, he could seldom rise for long above the fascinations and machinations of clubhouse politics. Later I heard from various political contacts that O'Dwyer's original encouragement of my plan vis-a-vis Moses' approachway had been a convenient maneuver, a ploy used to get another project okayed which he wanted and Moses did not. Moses fell for this ploy of the mayor's, and as these two came to final agreement, I and any hopes for an effective approach to the United Nations were sacrificed to Tammany politics. All I knew at the time, however, was that we were before the board and that O'Dwyer was suddenly unfriendly. I said, "Your Honor, I am here to present my plan for the approach to the United Nations."
"Before you do any presenting, I want to ask you a question. Do you have any property in the area that's going to require condemnation under your plan?"
"Yes, your Honor, I have. Every member of the Board of Estimate and yourself knows every piece of property we own, and we are willing to have that property condemned along with the rest in order to be sure that this plan goes through. We recognize that the value of the property is much higher than any condemnation award that we could possibly receive."
"We'll draw our own conclusions as to whether your motives are so holy—or whether your motives aren't to sell the city your property at condemnation."
As the talk went on in this vein, with others joining in, I was flabbergasted. I noted that these comments were impugning the honor of my firm and myself and added that we did not own more than six percent of the total landmass of the plan. Then, as the mayor or some other member of the board continued to harass me, I knew our cause was lost. By now I was so angered that I decided to go down with all guns blazing. Standing up in front of the board, I challenged Moses to make his comments without the mantle of immunity, and invited him to sue me for mine. I also accused the board, elected officials all, of having abdicated their powers to Moses, a nonelected official, and this, of course, was like spraying oil on a red-hot griddle. The politicos' sputtering rose to a roar. I was ordered out of the room, but I yelled back that I was an American citizen with a right to speak and be heard, then stalked out of the chamber on my own.
The next day The New York Times described the meeting as the bitterest debate in recent City Hall history, but in fact it was no debate, it was a cry in the wilderness. All I got for my trouble was a public black eye. Nonetheless, I spoke up for the record, and I'm glad I did, because I was one-hundred-percent right and have been so proven. This was one case where my friend Moses was one-hundred-percent wrong.
After this encounter, in order to clear away any possible question about Webb & Knapp's alleged special interest in holding property for condemnation, we sold off our holdings in the proposed approachway area and continued our fight for a decent plan, but it was a quixotic campaign. By now the design for a minuscule approachway was, in effect, unassailable. The citizenry, poorly organized or apathetic, could bring little pressure to bear.
One good thing that did come of the encounter is that John Price Bell, a reporter from the Telegram, came to get my side of the story. I was so impressed by his questioning that I later offered him a position at Webb & Knapp that obviously needed filling, that of director of public relations. For many years Bell did a very effective job in this position, and I never forgot the harsh lesson Moses had taught us. Henceforth Webb & Knapp undertook no major project in a city without recruiting support from two key sectors—financially important local groups and the general populace.
Another constructive and important result of my involvement with the United Nations is that it led to my first meeting with the Rockefellers, whose vision and magnanimity made the UN settlement in New York possible. This estimable and talented family deserves great credit for the UN and for a great many other visionary projects, such as Fort Tryon Park, the Cloisters, and the Museum of Modern Art. It is true, as some have pointed out, that had Webb & Knapp developed "X City," Rockefeller Center, then only sixty-percent occupied, would have faced serious competition. The alternative creation of the UN headquarters on Webb & Knapp land tended to help bring new businesses to New York—and to Rockefeller Center.
I became for a time a special consultant to the Rockefellers on real-estate matters, and as such persuaded them to combine their personal holdings into their real-estate company. The gross rentals from this real estate then would sufficiently overshadow income from other investments so the owners could escape the quite heavy personal-holding-company taxes.
As to Webb & Knapp's role in the UN operation, we admittedly made a good profit selling the properties surrounding the original slaughterhouse site, but we sold the slaughterhouses at a very modest price, and gave up many millions in future profits on a very valuable property. I had a bit of a struggle getting my syndicate partners to go along with the UN deal, and had, i
n effect, to buy one out by giving him full title to his share of our total acreage.
When, as the UN's champion, I was so gauche as to lose the battle for a decent approachway, an embarrassed UN Secretariat pretended they hardly knew me. At the dedication ceremonies for the new buildings, my wife and I were seated well to the back of the area, while a great many others, who had had far less to do with the realization of the project, were at the front and center of activities. Sometime after these ceremonies, I was called upon by Andrew Cordier, then the undersecretary at the UN and now the president of Columbia University. He told me he was going to ask a favor of me. Louis Orr, the well-known artist, had agreed to do an official etching of the United Nations buildings for five thousand dollars. Cordier wondered if I would donate the money. I was feeling a bit battered by this time and countered by asking why he didn't go to some of the people who made money on the UN project, the architects, the engineers, the builders. We had only sold the property to the UN, and that at a sacrifice. Why at this stage of the game, I asked him, did he come to me for five thousand dollars? I hadn't been treated very cordially.
He said, "I know you haven't, but I also know you are goodhearted, and I hope you'll do it for us."
I thought for a while and then said that I might donate the five thousand, but only under certain conditions. These conditions were that I get the number-one etching, the original print, plus the exclusive right to use the design as an emblem on the securities of my company, on my silver, china, glassware, in fact, anywhere that it pleased me. Cordier said the UN would be delighted to grant me this exclusive privilege. Having made a number of sacrifices for the UN which were now completely taken for granted, I was amused that for only five thousand dollars I was being treated in the manner royal. Somewhere here there was a moral to be drawn, but I was too busy on too many other projects to concern myself about it.
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