The Plasco Building was a 17-story high-rise in Tehran. It was built in 1962 by the prominent Iranian Jewish businessman Habib Elghanian, and it was named after his plastics company. The building was the tallest building in Iran when it was constructed, and it was considered an iconic landmark of the Tehran skyline. The Plasco building collapsed on January 19, 2017, during a fire.
Advertising in Iranian newspapers was a new phenomenon in the late 1920s. Advertisements introduced Iranians to some other new phenomena such as cars, radio, instant cameras, and the European-style outfit that revolutionized how Iranians lived and interacted with each other.
The ads here are selected from the newspapers published between 1926 to 1931.
Three photographs of Armenian families, most likely taken to be attached to travel documents. The photographs were taken in Isfahan by Minas Patkerhanian Machertich in 1920s-1930s.
In May 1887, the American periodical “Harper’s New Monthly Magazine” published an article about a trip from Tehran to Baghdad. The following images are from that article and show the outfits of Iranian women in that period. The photographs show the clothing of different minorities, as well as outfits for indoor and outdoor use and the different seasons.
Portraits of Iranian women from the late Qajar period (late 19th century to early 20th century). The images are from the photo archive of Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies.
The building that houses Tehran’s Post and Communications Museum today was initially built in 1928 as the Ministry of Post and Telegraph. The architect, Nikolai Markov, was a Russian immigrant who remained in Iran after the October revolution and established himself as one of the main architects of the public buildings and government new institutions.
Pre-World War II advertisements from Anglo-Persian Oil Company and other companies of the 1920s and 1930s.
The 1973 FILA Wrestling World Championships were held in Tehran, Iran.
This is a collection of album cover art for the soundtracks of pre-revolutionary movies made in Iran in the late 1960s and 1970s. The collection includes designs for the soundtracks of art-house movies as well as commercial blockbusters.
This house near Ferdowsi Square was built by the Russian architect Alexander Belyn in 1938. Belyn was working for Kampsax – a Danish construction company founded in 1917 which had several projects in Iran, including the construction of 900 km of cross-country railroads.
