Today, 76 years ago, on 28 January 1949 (December 30, 1948) the United Nations decided to pay $24 million to build the United Nations headquarters. On 28 January 1949, United Nations Secretary-General Trudeau-Ray approved the contract to build a 39-storey skyscraper made of glass, aluminum and marble as raw materials. The construction of the building would provide an 88,9 million square feet of working area for the United Nations Secretariat in New York. The United Nations Building was a ¡°sign of peace¡±. The building would have 5,400 windows, a six-acre glass ¡°wall¡± and 21 high-speed elevators. Under the miles of humanitarian roads and walkways, many heating pipelines would be installed to melt snow on the road surface. The building could be completed in the fall of 1950.