Cities Vied for Site of UN Headquarters

choi

George Melloan. When World Peace Had Glamour; From San Francisco to French Lick Springs, 248 US cities vied to host the United Nations. Wall Street Journal, Mar 23, 2013
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 40430587072370.html
(book review on Charlene Mires, Capital of the World; The race to host the United Nations. NYU Press, 2013, AND Roger Lipsey, Hammarskjöld: A Life. University of Michigan Press, 2013)

(a) Excerpt in the window of print: By 1953 the UN had moved intio its gleaming New York headquarters. Next it found a celebrity secretary-general: Dag Hammarskjöld.

(b) Quote: "Interestingly, the Russians on the new Security Council favored America, most likely because a UN in Europe might interfere with Stalin's imperial designs.

Note:
(i) The review states, "The 'platform' the builder [New York real-estate developer  William Zeckendorf] referred to was designed by his firm to elevate a 'new city,' modeled on Rockefeller Center, above east Manhattan abattoirs and busy FDR Drive."
(A) Rockefeller Center
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Center
(built by Rockfeller family 1930–1939)
(B) For FDR Drive, see Franklin D Roosevelt East River Drive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fra ... lt_East_River_Drive
(commonly referred to as the FDR Drive)
(C) Later in the review is a description about the New UN building: "Soon the spetacular Le Corbusier glass tower had risen."

Le Corbusier
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier
(Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier; 1887-1965; Swiss architect)

Quote:

"Le Corbusier adopted his pseudonym in the 1920s, allegedly deriving it in part from the name of an ancestor, 'Lecorbésier.'"

"In 1922, he presented his scheme for a 'Contemporary City' for three million inhabitants (Ville Contemporaine). The centerpiece of this plan was the group of sixty-story, cruciform skyscrapers; steel-framed office buildings encased in huge curtain walls of glass.


(ii) Rapid City, South Dakota
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_City,_South_Dakota
(is the second-largest city [2010 census 68,000] in the state of South Dakota [capital: Pierre; largest city: Sioux Falls]; Named after Rapid Creek on which the city is established)
(iii) Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sault_Ste._Marie,_Michigan

Quote:

"It became the first European settlement in the region that became the Midwestern United States, when, in 1668, [French] Father Jacques Marquette, having heard of the Native American village, traveled there to found a Catholic mission.

"Sault Sainte-Marie translates from French as 'the Rapids of Saint Mary.' The Saint Mary's River runs from Lake Superior to Lake Huron, separating the twin border cities [its twin being Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario])

* sault (n; Obsolete French, from Old French, leap, waterfall; see somersault)
"A waterfall or rapids"
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sault
* The noun "sault" is not found in Modern French.
* English noun:
somersault (n; Middle French sombresaut leap, ultimately from Latin super over + saltus leap, from salire to jump; First Known Use circa 1530)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/somersault

(iii) For French Lick Springs, Indiana, see
French Lick, Indiana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Lick,_Indiana
(a town in French Lick Township, Orange County; population was 1,807 at the 2010 census; French Lick was originally a French trading post built near a spring and salt lick; Franklin D Roosevelt announced his intention to run for president at a National Governors' Convention held at the French Lick Springs Hotel)

(iv) Prescott Bush
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Bush
(1895-1972; born in Columbus, Ohio, to Samuel Prescott Bush and Flora Sheldon Bush)

(v) The review says, "Two years later [in 1950] came the Soviet-provoked North Korean invasion of South Korea, embroiling the US in a nasty shooting war. Condemnation of the invasion by the UN's first secretary-general, the Norwegian Trygve Lie, put him at odds with the Soviets, who at one point boycotted the UN."
(A) No wonder Soviet Union, rather than vetoed, was away from several key votes in UN in early 1950s.  
(B) Trygve Lie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trygve_Lie
(1896-1968; Norwegian; UN's 1st secretary-general: 1946-1952)

(vi) Dag Hammarskjöld
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dag_Hammarskj%C3%B6ld
(1905-1961; UN secretary-general 1953-1961; ; He is among three other people to be awarded a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize [in 1961, having been nominated before his death])

Quote: "By 1930, he had obtained Licentiate of Philosophy and Master of Laws degrees. Even before he was finished with his law degree he got a job as assistant secretary of the unemployment committee [in Sweden]. From 1930 to 1934, Hammarskjöld was Secretary on a governmental committee on unemployment. During this time he wrote his economics thesis, "Konjunkturspridningen" ("The Spread of the Business Cycle"), and received a doctorate from Stockholm University.