U Thant Island U Thant Island, officially Belmont Island, is an island in the East River across from United Nations headquarters at 42nd Street on Manhattan in New York City. William Steinway, of piano manufacturer Steinway & Sons, put a shaft down the small granite outcrop Man-o'-War Reef as part of his 1890s excavation of trolley tunnels under the river to link bustling Manhattan to his eponymous company town in Queens County, placing excess landfill atop the reef. But Steinway died before his tunnels' completion, and it was financier August Belmont, Jr. who finished the project in 1907, leaving as a bonus this tiny 100 x 200 foot (30 x 60 metre) artificial island, less than half an acre (twenty ares) of land. The Steinway Tunnels are still in use as part of the 7- Flushing line(see for construction details) in the New York Subway, and trains still pass directly beneath the island many times a day. Belmont Island, after the financier, became (and remains) the legal name of the island. United Nations employees following guru Sri Chinmoy, who served as an interfaith chaplain at UN HQ, adopted this forgotten islet just outside their window in 1977, greening its surface and unofficially renaming it after Burmese Buddhist United Nations Secretary General U Thant, a friend of Chinmoy. It is now the site of a thirty-foot "oneness arch" preserving personal items of the island's namesake. U Thant Island is now the more common name, no doubt because these devotees of the group Sri Chinmoy: The Peace Meditation at the United Nations, who have leased it from New York State, are the only humans to have found a use for this rather inconvenient piece of land. The uninhabited islet is currently protected as a sanctuary for migrating birds, including a small colony of Double-crested Cormorant, and access is prohibited to the public. Caples Jefferson Architects proposed for The New York Times Capsule, the The New York Times year 2000 time capsule, an obelisk on U Thant Island, designed to gradually disintegrate over the next millennium. Another entrant won the competition, but there may still be some effort to accomplish the project. U Thant Island, or rather Belmont Island is legally a part of New York County and the Borough of Manhattan. External links Forgotten-NY An Island just for U -photos ...to the New York Islands -photos Newtown Creek- Borderline Crazy -clear photo of arch Steinway, Queens -Steinway's Queens company town www.nycsubway.org The Steinway Tunnels -their construction IRT Corona/Flushing Line -7 Line Caples Jefferson Architects - look for 'New York Times Capsule' under 'Projects' FAVORITE ARTICLES: History of the World    History of the United States    History of Europe    Ancient History    History    Military History    World War I    Bombing of Dresden    California    US Constitution    Frank Sinatra    Boston    Marbury v. Madison This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html You may copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license. You must provide a link to http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html To view or edit this article at Wikipedia go to http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_Thant_Island