Landmarks · 1948
The Isaiah Wall
Ralph Bunche Park, across First Avenue
What is true
Incised with Isaiah 2:4 — “they shall beat their swords into plowshares” — facing the UN, which rose on the old slaughterhouse grounds.
What it became
The city woke up overlooking world peace where it used to overlook the killing-floor. The wall remembers both.
The lighthouse on the wall
The ghasts of old fear come over the wall by night. Aim the lighthouse. Don't let them cross. Dispel five.
The wall holds. The slab tops out over the old killing-ground. “A lighthouse is only a wall that learned to look back.” — Wren
Tudor City Confidential · unlocked
Swords Into Plowshares, 1948
Across First Avenue from Tudor City stands the Isaiah Wall, a granite face incised with Isaiah 2:4 — “they shall beat their swords into plowshares… neither shall they learn war any more.” Built and dedicated in 1948 as the UN rose, it watched the city from the foot of the bluff. The word “ISAIAH” itself was not carved until a 1975 rededication.
1°The prophecy was added to the wall before the prophet's name was — the warning came first, the source came later.
Tudor City Confidential · unlocked
Peace On The Killing-Ground
The United Nations rose on the old First Avenue slaughterhouse and Abattoir Center — seventeen acres of killing-floors that Tudor City had been built to turn its back on. Developer William Zeckendorf assembled the riverfront; the Rockefeller family bought the parcel from him and donated it to the city for the UN.
1°A house of world peace was raised on the exact ground where the abattoirs once ran red — the view changed; the foundations did not.
Tudor City Confidential · unlocked
Ralph Bunche, Named 1979
The little park that holds the Isaiah Wall was named in 1979 for Ralph Bunche — the first African-American Nobel Peace laureate, honored for mediating the 1949 Armistice Agreements. A granite spiral stair in its corner climbs the bluff to 43rd Street and Tudor City.
1°The stair still joins the peace-park below to the fortress that refused to look at it — the wall keeps watch from the lighthouse above.