One of two murals gifted to the UN from Brazil, “Peace,” by Candido Portinari, dignifies the west wall of the General Assembly.
Fritz Glarner’s 24- foot-high mural is displayed in the UN’s Dag Hammarskjold Library.
Zezé’s flower shop
A local haunt
Peter Detmold Park on FDR Drive
Here, Glarner’s mural is carried into the library lobby in 1962.
The Beekman Hotel
The Beekman Hotel's Top of the Tower restaurant.
A building on the UN’s modern campus.
The River House
The UN’s “Sphere within a Sphere” sculpture, by Italian artist Arnaldo Pomodoro
of

neighborhood

Turtle Bay

On Manhattan's East side, stretching from 41st to 53rd Streets and from Lexington Avenue to the East River, is Turtle Bay, originally a 40-acre tract known as Turtle Bay Farm. By the late-19th century, the once-thriving area had fallen into decay: The waterfront, with its rotting piers, became rundown, and First Avenue was populated by factories, slaughterhouses, and cattle pens. Those structures were eventually razed to make way for UN Plaza—which also resulted in the demolition of Third Avenue’s elevated rail line.

The 1920s brought a renaissance to Turtle Bay, notably the elegant restoration of 20 townhouses on East 48th and 49th Streets, now the Turtle Bay Gardens Historic District. (The yards of the back-to-back houses were converted into a communal garden by taking a six-foot strip from each property to form a common path.) Perhaps the most famous of those residences is 244 East 49th Street, purchased by actress Katharine Hepburn in the mid-1930s for $27,500. (It’s currently available for rent at $30,000 a month.) In her autobiography, Hepburn wrote, “Now the skyscrapers on the street cut out a lot of the sun—too bad—but it’s quiet and convenient and it’s mine and I like it.”

The skyscrapers have continued to rise, replacing brownstones and giving rise to luxury condos and rental towers, banks, and chain stores. “I love the neighborhood and I’m happy to be here,” says resident Lee Frankel. “But it has gradually lost its character, a victim of development without vision.” The nonprofit Turtle Bay Association, founded in 1957, serves as a community advocacy group to address such quality-of-life issues. Even today, though, a stroll reveals Turtle Bay’s charms, including tony enclaves (Beekman Place and Sutton Place); the Chrysler Building and the Ford Foundation; Greenacre Park, with its 25-foot waterfall; and Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, home to a Holocaust Memorial and a garden named in honor of Hepburn—who worked to preserve her neighborhood’s character.

Photographs above by Adrian Ramos unless otherwise stated. Fritz Glarner mural, gift of the Ford Foundation to the United Nations, UN photo by Lois Conner; Candido Portinari "Peace" mural, gift from Brazil to the United Nations, UN photo by Lois Conner. Fritz Glarner mural, UN Photo by MMB.