But not since the Eisenhower Administration. Now, 55 years later, Marjorie Bloomberg Tiven – the mayor’s sister and the city’s chief of diplomatic protocol, has persuaded the United Nations to do the right thing:

In January, the city’s Fire Department found 866 violations of the fire code. By October, less than 20 percent of the violations had been addressed. (Because of concerns about possible terrorist attacks, Ms. Tiven will not be more specific about the violations.)

The U.N. took 9 months to allow a fire inspection

In an Oct. 30 letter, drafted by Ms. Tiven’s office and signed by the mayor, the city demanded that the United Nations provide proof of, among other things, a fire safety plan, additional smoke detectors, and resolution of the remainder of the 866 violations by early next year.

“If the United Nations does not adhere to these deadlines,” Mayor Bloomberg said, “the city will be forced to direct the cessation of all public school visits to the United Nations.”

“The mayor has been patient,” Ms. Tiven said, “but he can’t be patient forever. The city is going to do the right thing.”

Like an embassy, the United Nations is considered foreign soil. But it is still required to abide by local fire codes. To have the Fire Department inspect the complex, which was completed in 1952, took finesse. “We had to knock on the door nicely,” Ms. Tiven said, “which turned out to be a long conversation because it had never been done.” Not in 55 years, since the Eisenhower administration, has there been a full fire-safety inspection there.

Indeed, it took nine months to get permission for city fire inspectors to enter the premises, Ms. Tiven said, and another six months to find the code violations.

At the United Nations, Michael Adlerstein, assistant secretary general for the capital master plan, said about the fire code violations, “We totally agree that we should get them fixed, and we are moving toward getting them fixed.”

Anthony Ramirez, “Bringing the U.N. Up to Code,” The New York Times , November 23^rd 2007.

It’s worth noting that another set of buildings exempt from local codes – with lethal results – was the World Trade Center. Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins, “Rudy’s Grand Illusion,” The Village Voice

, August 29^th, 2006; and their book, Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11 which details the code violations and their consequences at great length.
However – if the United Nations’ conduct was outrageous in 2007 – how much less outrageous was it in 2002, when the mayor took office? Why does there seem to have been more press coverage of diplomats’ failures to pay parking tickets than safety code violations in a high-rise building in a residential neighborhood – a building which is certainly a conceivable terrorist target?