Church Center for the United Nations

 office building, chapel

12-story International-style office building and chapel completed in 1963. Designed by William Lescaze & Associates, it houses offices of various churches, foundations, think-tanks and other non-governmental organizations with an interest in the work of the United Nations.

The facade is clad in dark-grey metal and glass. The center is most known for its first-floor Chapel at the United Nations. It is situated between concrete end piers, the northern of which extends across the north facade as a ground-floor wall for most of its length. Centered at the east facade is a stained-glass wall by Henry Lee Willet , fronted by a wall-like sculpture of white and black metal. Titled "Man's Search for Peace", it shows human-like shapes around a large eye-like form, and was designed by Benoît Gilsoul. The stained-glass wall and sculpture are both framed by wall sections of vertical bronze ribs on either side, and topped by a shallow 2nd-floor balcony with a glass railing. Near the west end of the north facade on 44th Street is the main entrance, with slightly-recessed glass doors framing a revolving door below a large transom. To the right is a small wall of white marble, and all of this is covered by another, narrower balcony. The far west end is clad in brown brick and has a metal service door at the ground floor.

This brown brick shaft rises up the west end of the building, with a bay of narrow, recessed balconies with glass railings at its left edge, joining to the rest of the facade, and extending two floors above it. The 2nd floor is recessed around both the north and east facades, with floor-to-ceiling windows and some glass doors opening onto the balconies.

The rest of the upper floors are clad in a curtain wall of dark-tinted glass with brown metal spandrels and mullions.

From the beginning, the church center was considered interdenominational in spirit and purpose, and nonprofit groups representing various religions have been housed there. The church center was originally administered by the National Council of Churches. Subsequently it was run by the Methodist Church itself, and then by the church's General Board of Church and Society. The different parts of the church involved in it became complicated, so to simplify it came to be that it was owned and operated solely by the United Methodist Women organization.

www.nycago.org/Organs/NYC/html/ChurchCenterUN.html