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ARC-XXX, The United Nations Building was designed in 1956 by Geoffrey Heighway, unfortunately before he could finish the model he passed away. The model languished for 50 years, until a group of modelers decided to rectify this problem and bring ARC-XXX to life. Kell Black and Rob Tauxe were able to get copyright permission from Myles Mandell and David Tilson. They then were able to put together a talented team of people to get it just right. (Click here for the full story) Special thanks go to Robin Traci Quackenbush and Ranop Subhawong for doing a great deal of drafting, Newlon Tauxe, William Tauxe, and Hal Freedman, for field research and encouragement, Cynthia Tauxe for color selection, lettering, patience and encouragement, and Gil Benson for beta testing.

Heighways earliest architectural models had simple two dimensional backgrounds, as time went on his backgrounds became more detailed, this model has a fully three dimensional background. The detail in the background in this model is amazing and you would almost expect to see a miniature Napoleon Solo or Illya Kuryakin going into a Tailor's shop across the street from the Secratariat Building. (Click here for UN construction tips)

Chartered in October of 1945 at the end of World War Two, the United Nations has become the primary forum for discussion and decision making on issues of global importance. It first met in London, adopting resolutions to end the use of atomic weapons of mass destruction, and sending peacekeeping forces to Palestine. The cornerstone of the new headquarters building in New York City was laid on October 24, 1949, on a parcel of land on the East River purchased with a gift of John D. Rockefeller, and was occupied in 1952. Designed by William Harrison, with contributions from Le Corbusier, it is a sterling example of modern architecture. It consisted of the General Assembly Hall, with its richly paneled interior and a domed roof, the Conference Building with three large halls donated by Denmark, Sweden and Norway, the tall Secretariat Building, which houses the administrative offices, and a small and undistinguished library. In 1961, this library was replaced with the larger Dag Hammarskjöld library, and the building complex reached its current form. Now undergoing extensive restoration and repair after 50 years, the building is visited by hundreds of thousands each year.

The United Nations and its agencies, including UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and the High Commission on Refugees, have fostered international dialogue and problem resolution, promoted and guarded peace, and fostered development around the world. The 50 original charter member nations have grown to 189, as many independent countries emerged from the colonial era. The five permanent members of the governing Security Council, the United States, France, Great Britain, Russia, and China are the Allies who won World War Two; they are joined by ten other countries who are elected to the council for two year terms. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the UN or its agencies on six occasions:

1981: the UN High Commission was again recognized for assistance to Asian refugees

Completing Heigway's United Nations Model Design

The original artwork for the United Nations was in the form of black and white layouts for six cards in black and white, with galley proof marks suggesting that it was nearly finished. We began the effort with a relatively crude copy of the proofs, and were greatly aided after a much higher quality copy of these layouts was obtained, that appeared on an eBay auction, for which we gratefully acknowledge the helpful cooperation of both the buyer and seller. This was used as a template to create a new digital master. The size of the copies was not uniform, and the first task was to bring them all to a same size. In doing so, it became apparent that the original artwork was almost twice the final printed size, requiring reduction by exactly 49.5% to produce a 3 ½ by 5 inch card. The redrafting was a lengthy process, requiring adjustment and modification of each line and edge, because of slight pixilation of the copy, and the tiny size of some of the parts. As the proofs were in black and white, we had to guess at the color scheme that was planned. To achieve a range of colors similar to the one Heighway worked with, we chose colors similar in hue to other Micromodels

In the course of this reconstruction, several other issues had to be resolved, theset illustrate the challenge of modeling itself, as well as that of completing an old design of an evolving building complex. In addition, they tell us something about how Heighway designed his model. The first challenge was the appearance of the library. Heighway’s 1955-56, design, has the original library built in 1952. A new library was built in 1961, and dedicated to Dag Hammarskjöld; it has become an integral part of the complex. We decided to remain true to Heighway’s design.

The second challenge was the many inaccuracies in the model. We chose to respect the model as designed. The nature of the errors tell us something about the source materials Heighway used. He certainly did not work from architectural plans, for he represents the overall plan of the grounds as a rectangle, while the actual grounds are trapezoidal in shape.

Similarly, he cannot have visited New York or seen the building himself. The doorway entry structure of the Secretariat (3A) is clearly not based on the real structure, nor are the buildings immediately to the south of the UN. The yellow pentagonal building (A) to the south bears only a loose resemblance to the actual building, which still stands in that location, and the low white building (B) next to it was in fact a power plant one block further away to the south, while the place where it appears on the model was at the time and still remains an empty lot or park. While the impressionistic Manhattan Background gives a good overall feeling of the background and is a tour de force of modeling, he missed the marvelous Art Deco Chrysler building. This is just a few blocks away, and in the 50's would have loomed close and unmistakable directly to the west of the UN. He would have found it an irresistible subject to include.

We conclude that he worked from photographs of the building complex. He could have had access to photos in media or perhaps those taken by a someone who visited New York. Another source was the United Nations itself. An official UN photograph from 1956, taken from the East River, distributed by the UN photo archives and reproduced on the jacket of this replica, shows the Manhattan background as it is represented in the model. This photo has one remarkable clue that suggests to us that Heighway used this very shot. There appears to be a single tall building to the right of the Secretariat in this photo. This is a chimera, composed of two separate buildings, one before the other. It is actually the New York Daily News Building, which is flat-topped and has distinctive vertical stripes, with the top of the Empire State Building visible behind it. Other pictures show the two building separately. Heighway carefully modeled this chimera as building “H”, even including a special overlay to capture more accurately the Daily News building. Of many photos of the UN we have examined, this is the only one which shows those two buildings in tight conjunction; in all others they are clearly separate buildings. We conclude that Heighway used this very photograph to design the model. If he obtained one official photograph from the UN, he may have obtained others. The photo archivist at the UN has supplied several possible candidates that would have been mailed in response to an inquiry in that time period. They show some parts of the complex well, but do not give a complete picture of all sides, and in particular do not illustrate the entry structure 3A..

Designing a model of Manhattan was certainly a challenge. The design of the buildings in the Manhattan Background show a confident modeler’s eye, choosing a level of detail and a mix of building shapes to sketch in the impression of Manhattan skyline, without getting bogged down in limitless detail. The buildings directly across the street are reasonable close copies of those that appear in photographs of the period there, including the dramatic neo-gothic complex of the Tudor City apartments, which still face the UN. The range of buildings that appear behind the first row is more impressionistic, and it is difficult to assign many of them to actual buildings. As noted above, the central skyscraper (H), in fact does not exist at all, but most closely resembles the New York Daily news building with an extra top. It is possible that he knew that there was the Empire State building somewhere to the south, and thus he designed the tallest building on the model (C) as an impression of what that building might be. He may also have known that the skyscraper of Rockefeller Center was further to the north, and chosen to represent it as building (R), without using a clear image of either to guide him.

Adding color to the model brought additional challenges. Color photographs in print media of the period are rare, though one spread in the National Geographic magazine was particularly helpful. Friends photographed the existing building and surrounding neighborhood to document their current colors. For those buildings that have since disappeared, such as many of those small buildings across the street from the UN, we chose colors either determined from the National Geographic spread, or colors that were compatible with their construction materials and suggested by the available black and white photographs. We have found no clear description of the color of the original library, and its material is difficult to ascertain from the available photos. We assumed it was a light sandstone or marble. The impressionistic buildings of the Manhattan background were simply assigned colors in a way that generated a pleasing and realistic variety.