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The World Came to Long Island The small Village of Lake Success played a big role in the launch of the United Nations
Staff Writer
On May 14, 1948, the Security Council approved a proclamation recognizing Israel's independence. In early 1950, the Soviet delegation headed by Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko staged the first walkout in UN history, to protest Taiwanese representation in the world organization. Later that year, on June 27, the Security Council approved the use of military force -- principally U.S. troops -- in the Korean War. These actions, monitored around the world, took place in a small Long Island community. The Village of Lake Success, on the Nassau side of the border with Queens, served as home to the Security Council from 1946 to 1951. The council operated from a cavernous factory building on Marcus Avenue that had housed part of the Sperry Gyroscope Co. during World War II. The United Nations had been founded at a meeting in San Francisco in April, 1945, just before the war in Europe ended. That summer, the newly formed UN Secretariat found temporary shelter in the Bronx, on the Hunter College campus of what is now Lehman College, while the General Assembly met in London. The search for a permanent home for the UN focused at first on small towns in Westchester and in Connecticut. Several sites in Connecticut's Fairfield County were considered, but the selections aroused vigorous opposition in neighboring communities. Then New York Mayor William O'Dwyer, anxious to keep the UN in the area, offered the New York City Building at the site of the 1939 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows as a temporary meeting place for the General Assembly. The Sperry plant, just 20 minutes away by limousine, was suggested as an interim home for the Secretariat and Security Council. Just southeast of Little Neck and Douglaston, the Lake Success area had been the home of the Matinecock Indians, one of the communities of the Algonquians, in precolonial times. The village name, in fact, had been derived from one of the Matinecock chiefs, Sacut. In 1945, the decision on the future site of the Security Council was made, ultimately, at the grassroots level. The proposed conversion of the Sperry building had evoked vigorous protests in Lake Success, then a community of fewer than 1,200 residents. As the official village history reads: ``A group of usually tranquil citizens . . . rose up in opposition'' -- some in fear of losing their homes, some in fear of a decrease in the taxes Sperry paid. Earlier, residents had fought the arrival of Sperry and its application in 1941 to build a large defense plant to make planes and naval equipment, including its well-known gyroscope. Opponents argued against locating big industry in the quiet neighborhood. But with the approach of World War II, pressure from the federal government overcame the opposition. In 1945, Lake Success Mayor Schuyler Van Bloem stepped in on behalf of the UN. ``The mayor was afraid that Lake Success' image might be hurt if the UN was rejected,'' village historian Sylvia Bareish recounted in a recent interview. So the mayor named a committee of citizens to study the proposal, Bareish said, and after meeting with UN officials, the group recommended that residents put the question to an advisory ballot. ``In the unofficial referendum, the vote was 102-70 to invite the UN to Lake Success for a temporary stay,'' Bareish said. And on Valentine's Day in 1946, the General Assembly approved the relocation. As a result, Lake Success' official history states: `'The people of the Village were acclaimed all over the world as progressive, liberal Americans interested in furthering of peace.'' And for five years, the flags of the member nations were on display along the entranceway to the UN building. Renovation was still under way when the UN moved into part of the former Sperry building on Aug. 16, 1946. The first Security Council meeting came 12 days later, on Aug. 28. From the start, the Cold War was on the table. One of the first issues was a border dispute between Greece and Albania. The vote to approve UN military involvement in Korea was the most dramatic event during the Security Council's years in Lake Success. With the world stunned by the prospect of another global war less than five years after V-J Day, the council's chamber was filled to capacity, while another 5,000 visitors had to be turned away, Newsday reported the following day. The former defense plant had been partitioned to create office space for the Secretariat, the UN's administrative wing, while the Security Council met in a former conference room. During those years, UN drivers ferried delegates and staff members to and from the General Assembly hall in Queens, creating perhaps the world's first look at limousine diplomacy. In 1947, the UN took possession of the Van Nostrand Homestead on the Sperry site and converted the former 18th-Century guesthouse into a nursery school for children of the UN Secretariat's employees. During the postwar years, housing was difficult for most Americans. In Queens and on Long Island, nonwhite delegates found conditions especially difficult. Because of discrimination, ``it was almost impossible for UN people to find housing,'' Sylvia Fuhrman, a Queens resident and a special representative of the UN secretary-general, said in 1989. To solve the shortage of living space, the UN arranged construction of a number of housing projects, such as Parkway Village in Queens, with more than 600 units. About 40 percent of the UN's almost 35,000 employees now live in Queens. In the spring of 1951, the UN moved to its current home along Manhattan's East River. Celebrating the organization's 50th anniversary in 1995, former employees gathered in the Lake Success building that once housed the Secretariat. By 1995, the Sperry building was back in the business of defense, occupied by Loral Defense Systems-East to build navigation equipment for the Trident submarine. Today Lockheed Martin occupies the plant, making submarine systems, said a public relations officer at the company's Maryland headquarters. ``Fascinating,'' he said, ``we didn't know the UN had been there.'' Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc. |
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