From the moment the doors opened in 1966 to the present, the towers of 860 and 870 United Nations Plaza have been home to some of New York’s most prominent families in politics, entertainment and commerce.
The 38-story residential UN Plaza is New York City’s only great modernist apartment house and has been long praised by critics for its classic dignity, elegant, understated features and beautiful proportions that have withstood the test of time.
Built as a pioneering multi-use complex of two apartment towers atop a seven-story office base, United Nations Plaza became a sensation as soon as it opened in 1965, took its place among the city’s best cooperative buildings, and continues to be treated with enormous respect by its residents and staff.
The brainchild of renowned architects Max Abramovitz and Wallace K. Harrison, authors of the neighboring United Nations complex, Lincoln Center and the Time-Life Building, it epitomizes the mid-century modern International Style. Echoing Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s apartment buildings on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive with its concrete structure clad in a glass curtain wall, it also incorporates traditional craftsmanship in the features that distinguished the great apartment houses of the early 20th Century–solid plaster walls, high ceilings, fireplaces, and rosewood parquet floors.
From the outset, United Nations Plaza has attracted accomplished urbanites from the worlds of entertainment, the arts, fashion, finance, law, media, medicine, and politics. It’s telling that today, United Nations Plaza counts among its owners many professionals in architecture, interior design, and real estate—connoisseurs of the special value and discrete charm of co-op apartment houses and admirers of landmark design.
