Before Tehran swallowed it, Gholhak was a village -- the first village of Shemiran, according to local tradition, sitting thirteen kilometers south of Imamzadeh Saleh on the old asphalt road. During the Qajar period, roughly a thousand people lived here. Rivers branched out from the village in several directions: one flowed toward the British Embassy, another fed the gardens of aristocratic palaces and the court residences of Qajar officials. The name itself comes from "Ghol" meaning small peak, with the diminutive suffix "-ak" -- Gholhak, a small prominence. Older inscriptions in the Gholhak Grand Mosque spell it "Qalahak," hinting at how the name shifted over generations of spoken Persian.

Aqueducts have fed Gholhak since ancient times, and some still flow. The most substantial runs through the grounds of the British Embassy, where its water irrigates old sycamore trees whose canopy has shaded diplomatic conversations for over a century. The neighborhood's two mosques -- the Jame Mosque and the Gholhak Aazam Mosque -- anchor the old village core. At the Aazam Mosque, palm branches are still brought out during the mourning days of Tasua and Ashura. A century-old bathhouse on Jalali Street, once known as old Hafez Bath, drew its water from the embassy aqueduct, heated it with wood-burning ovens, and served the neighborhood's residents until it closed in recent years. Its construction date is unknown.

The British Embassy garden in Gholhak has been the setting for many gatherings over the decades, but the most intriguing were the meetings of Freemasons held within its walls. During the first Pahlavi period, from 1925 to 1941, Mohammad Ali Foroughi -- himself the Grand Master of Masonic Lodges in Iran -- reportedly met with British and American representatives at the Gholhak Garden Memorial. These meetings took place even after Reza Shah had dismissed Foroughi from government service. The political influence that flowed from this garden was considerable enough that Reza Shah eventually felt compelled to restore Foroughi to his position. The reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, which began in 1941, is said to have been shaped in part by the decisions made in these shaded grounds.

Gholhak has produced and sheltered notable figures. Mohammad Beheshti, the revolutionary cleric and jurist who helped draft the Islamic Republic's constitution, lived here. So did Morteza Motahhari, the philosopher and theologian. Beheshti's son, Seyyed Alireza, recalled a neighborhood of laundries, butcher shops, fruit sellers, bakeries, and oil shops -- a middle-class district of one- and two-story houses connected by a narrow wooden bridge over the local river, so tight that only one car could cross at a time. Beheshti's house was purchased by Tehran Municipality and opened as a museum in July 2013. Abbas Kiarostami, the internationally celebrated filmmaker whose work defined Iranian art cinema for a generation, grew up attending Jam Gholhak School in this neighborhood.

In 1975, the Children's Park and Library No. 7 opened in Gholhak. By the 1980s, both were gone -- demolished entirely to make way for the construction of a Tehran Metro station. The park and library gave way to a construction workshop that churned for years before Gholhak Metro Station was finally inaugurated in May 2009. The neighborhood absorbed the loss and kept going, as neighborhoods in Tehran tend to do. Today, Gholhak is a district of shopping centers, the Shahid Beheshti Museum, the old Grand Mosque, and a Water Museum in Persian Gulf Park -- layers of the new built over the old, with the aqueducts still running beneath.