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Title: An American Architect in Iran and Afghanistan (part 3)
Author(s): HAUBEN, H.
Journal: Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica
Volume: 30    Date: 1999   
Pages: 215-238
DOI: 10.2143/OLP.30.0.583583

Abstract :
In the preceding issues of this journal, we were introduced to the correspondence of the American architect John B. McCool (JMC), who in 1937 participated in the Architectural Survey of Iran conducted by Professor Arthur U. Pope. The documents 1-14 enabled us to follow him day by day on his way from New York to Tehran and to be present at his first activities in the country where he hoped to build up a bright future for himself and his family. We left him and his companions on the 4th of October at Tabriz, waiting for Pope. They were going to pick him up the next day in Jolfa, a town on the Iranian side of the Soviet border. His arrival would be the real start of the campaign.
In the second part of his correspondence, we witness JMC’s genuine enthusiasm during his trips with Pope and colleagues, measuring and drawing an impressive amount of often remote and barely accessible architectural monuments. At the same time the reader is confronted with his growing disenchantment, as the country’s real possibilities turn out to be unexpectedly restricted. The end of the story is that, after five months of absence, JMC has to return home without any serious Iranian future. For all its instruction and excitement, the expedition had not been an altogether happy experience. It is amusing to see how this gradual process of changing appreciation and state of mind had in a certain way been foreshadowed by JMC’s successive messages to his little son about the pony he had promised to buy him. In the end there only remained a hypothetical donkey on which the boy could have “a ride once in a while”. Also in this respect did reality only slowly get through.

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