The building was as famous as, say, the Chrysler and Empire State buildings but more analogous to New York’s earliest skyscraper, the Woolworth Building. The entrepreneurial brothers had built the commercial high-rise on land near bazaar and fitted it with a one-of-a-kind shopping mall and commercial office space. Visitors would go to the rooftop of the 17-story building and enjoy 360-degree breathtaking view. The building – which was completed even before the Shah’s 1963 White Revolution that attempted to transform the economy and traditional social system – was cherished as a symbol of modernization efforts. Its story, however, embodied the discord between those who wanted to modernize the nation and the clerics who opposed those efforts.
