Detail View: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection: نقشهٔ جدید طهران / Plan de la Ville Téhéran

Romeiser, François de

1930

نقشهٔ جدید طهران / Plan de la Ville Téhéran

Sa’adat and Akhavan Ketabchi

Tehran

Separate Map

99

79

Dated 1309 (1930)

Tehran (Iran)

نقشهٔ جدید طهران / Plan de la Ville Téhéran

10844.000

Romeiser, François de

1930

نقشهٔ جدید طهران / Plan de la Ville Téhéran

No other examples traced outside of Iran. Citations in Literature: Francesco CHIODELLI, Beatrice DE CARLI, Maddalena FALLETTI, Cities to be Tamed? Spatial Investigations across the Urban South (Cambridge, 2014), Chapter ‘2. Tehran, A Paradigmatic Urban Form’, esp. pp. 248-50, map pictured on Fig. 2. Cf. Vincent F. COSTELLO, ‘The Morphology of Tehran: A Preliminary Study’, Built Environment: Eastern Urban Form and Culture, vol. 24, no. 4 (1998), pp. 201-16; Eckart EHLERS and Willem FLOOR, ‘Urban Change in Iran, 1920-1941’, Iranian Studies, vol. 26, no. 3/4 (Summer - Autumn, 1993), pp. 251-75; Asma MEHAN, ‘“Tabula Rasa” Planning: Creative Destruction and Building a New Urban Identity in Tehran’, Journal of Architecture and Urbanism, vol. 41, no. 3 (2017), pp. 210–20.

"Exceedingly rare - a large format, separately issued work that is one of the most important and interesting of all historical maps of Tehran, being the last major map to show ‘Old Tehran’, before it was utterly transformed by the strongman Reza Shah’s revolutionary urban planning programme, while being the first to show the initial stages of the revolutionary new design; with text in both Farsi and French, the map was drafted by the French engineer François de Romeiser who was commissioned by the city to advise on the mega-project, including a wealth of information available nowhere else, published in Tehran by a local boutique firm. Reza Shah Pahlavi, a military strongman who became the ruler of Persia in 1925, was determined to radically modernize and industrialize his culturally rich and proud, but economically and technologically undeveloped country. Key to this was his grand vision of utterly transforming Tehran, from what he saw as a chaotic, crowded oriental city with limited services, into a modern metropolis on a rational plan, inspired by the great European capitals. Up until the early 1930s, Tehran largely insisted of dense warrens or narrow, irregular streets, full of bazaars, and punctuated by a few magnificent gardens and places. It was completely encircled by a wall that was not of a traditional form but was rather built in the 1870s due to the former Qajar regime’s bizarre fascination with copying the ‘Thiers Walls’ that barricaded Paris during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1). Tehran was also surprisingly small for the capital of such a large and storied nation; in 1930 it had a population of only 250,000. In some ways, the Shah’s hand was forced, as big changes were necessary for the city it was totally unfit for the expected proliferation of automobiles and trams, as well as modern industry and electricity and sewage systems. Reza Shah, inspired especially by Paris, but also by Ankara, the reconstructed new capital of Turkey, was determined to radically transform Tehran in something totally unrecognizable. The overall plan to was to dramatically widen the few existing streets that were relatively strait, and then to carve new wide strait avenues through the existing old city, aiming to form a roughly even grid over the entire area. The old open sewers and ditches would be covered by sidewalks and lined with trees, while large new squares would be opened, graced with grand public buildings and monuments. The city walls would be demolished, opening Tehran to its suburbs, forcing energy outwards, to alleviate pressure on the centre. Modernist zoning codes would be introduced to make the city pleasant and efficient. As he did to many ancient things in Persia, Reza Shah ordered that virtually anything in the way of his new boulevards was to bull-dozed, whether it be a grim tenement or a Qajar Palace. Reza Shah hired dozens of the best engineers, architects and construction firms to advise and enact his vision. He also reformed the fiscal laws to allow Tehran to access significant additional state finds to support the urban revolution. The present bilingual (Farsi-French) map was issued in November 1930, and was drafted by the French engineer François de Romeiser, who was an advisor to the Tehran City Council on urban planning. It was published in Tehran in a charming form of bi-chrome off-set printing by the boutique house of Sa’adat and Akhavan Ketabchi. Predicated upon the best official information, the map is highly important in that it is both the last grand map of Tehran to showcase the old city, while being the first to depict the initial stages of Tehran’s transformation. The city is shown to still be encircled by its 1870s walls, with the vast majority of ‘Old Tehran’ remaining undisturbed, with its dense warren of streets. The Qajar palace complex occupies the dead centre, while the city’s 9 ‘Arrondissements’ (numbered wards) are labelled. This stands in stark contrast to the first stirrings of the Shah’s urban revolution, executed in 1927-9, where one can clearly see that the relatively strait major thoroughfares in the northern and southern ends of the city have been widened, while a few new squares, roundabouts and the beginnings of new wide aveneues are evident (mainly in the southern and northern parts of the city). The ‘Légende’ below the map reveals a great wealth of fascinating information. Importantly, it identifies the ‘rues projectées et elargissements’ (projected streets and widening of existing streets), showing dashed lines projecting thorough the city to reveal the Shah’s planned new avenues. The lines seem to transcend the old city without any regard for what was in their way, and this is largely how things would unfold in the coming years. Also explained, are the symbols employed to mark police district boundaries, police stations and railways. Amazingly, the list at the bottom locates and specifically names an amazing 124 sites by both number and grid-key reference, including the Golestan Palace (no. 5, a fabulous complex, today a UNESCO site); arsenal; post offices; government ministries and bureaus; Parliament (no. 26); clubs; many diplomatic missions; hotels; banks; mosques; churches; Synagogue (no. 74); schools; railway station; hospitals; the Grand Bazaar (no. 107); as well as the names of the gates in the city walls. During the 1930s, the Shah’s plan was realized as the grand boulevards were carved through the city pretty much as predicted by the present map. The walls and its gates were entirely demolished, parts of the Golestan Palace complex were taken down, and the Grand Bazaar was divided in half. Impressive new public buildings, made in modern style but inspired by classical Persian motifs, graced squares and roundabouts. Tehran experienced hyper-economic growth, attracting migration from across the country, such that by 1941, the year the Reza Shah was deposed (by the WWII Allies for backing Hitler) the city’s population in 1930 had more than doubled, to 540,000. As the Shah had wanted, the inner city had become much more open, livable and packed with all the same amenities found any Western European city. New suburban neighbourhoods sprang up and many of Tehran’s residents entered the middle class. An observer who visited the city in 1921, and who returned in 1941, commented that Tehran was completely unrecognizable! For a time, it seemed that the new Tehran was much better than the old. However, the city began to grow so rapidly that by the 1970s, the expansion started to outrun the urban plan, leading to terrible congestion and pollution. Yet without the 1920s-30s urban revolution the situation would certainly have been much worse. Today Tehran has a population of 9 million in the city proper (and 16 million metro), such that it faces many of the same problems as other great global megacities. The present work is one of seminal historical maps of Tehran. Like all large format separately issued plans of the city issued before the Sahab firm popularized map printing in Iran in the 1950s, it is exceedingly rare. We cannot trace any other examples of the map in institutions outside of Iran, not can we find any sales records. There are certainly seems to be a few examples in Iranian institutions, although we have not been able to ascertain exactly where. " (Alexander Johnson and Dasa Pahor, 2021)

10844.000

Separate Map

99

79

10844000.jp2

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Romeiser, François de