Guterres, envoys visit first UN meeting site

UN Secretary-General António Guterres and ambassadors from the Security Council 15 member states on 24 March visited Lehman College, which served as the location of the first Security Council meeting on US soil on 25 March 1946.

Eight decades ago, the basketball gym at Hunter College was refurbished as the UN Security Council chamber in just three weeks. Journalists were accommodated in a converted swimming pool. One of the first issues the Council discussed was Iran.

Hunter College was never large enough to accommodate the UN staff needed to run the organization, nor the delegates from the then 51 countries or Member States of the United Nations, so a new temporary headquarters was established in a Second World War munitions factory at Lake Success on Long Island.