History 4

A hundred Filipino young men were sent to San Francisco, USA, in November, 1903, when the Filipino-American War was still raging. They were dispersed to small towns and received by American families, “to prevent clannish association.” They were supposed to be influenced by “ nice American families” and American home life. That was the Pensionado system, an essential part of the “pacification” strategy of the USA. In fact, it was a San Francisco businessman, Mr. B. G, Dempster, who suggested the idea to Secretary Elihu Root.

The first Filipino architects and engineers were pensionados and were immediately absorbed by the bureaucracy. Many became physicians, lawyers, educators, university presidents, writers, politicians, businessmen, and officers of the army. Back in the Philippines, they were readily welcomed at the establishments frequented by Americans like the Army & Navy Club and the Philippine Columbian Club. They patronized restaurants serving American food, hobnobbed with American politicians, and were purveyors of American policies.

It was only in 1921 that the National Assembly passed a law to recognize engineers and architects. In that year, 32 architects were officially registered. Registration No. 1 was given to Tomas Mapua, followed by Carlos Barreto (the first pensionado architect) and Antonio Toledo. There were 22 Filipinos, seven Americans, two Germans and one Spaniard registered to practice architecture in the country. By 1941, this number reached close to a hundred. A new law with a separate statute for architects was about to be passed then but the war got in the way.

Held from 1908-1939, the 2-week fair was organized as a goodwill event to celebrate harmonious U.S.-Philippine relations and to showcase our commercial, industrial and agricultural progress. Spectacular parades, lavish shows, firework displays and the crowning of the Manila Carnival Queen highlighted the "greatest annual event in the Orient".

As the Carnivals became even more elaborate in the succeeding years, architects were hired to render their professional and expert services in designing the overall Carnival look, including its fabulous buildings and structures.

Returning Filipino architects who were sent as pensionados to study in the beaux arts schools of the American East Coast, were the first to be employed for these all-important tasks. Three of them would go on to achieve national recognition and earn their well-deserved place as leading lights of Philippine architecture: Tomas Mapua, Carlos Barretto andJuan Arellano.

was the first registered architect of the Philippines who designed the 1917, 1920 and the 1921 Carnivals. He was sent to America by the U.S. government for his high school and college education. He earned his Architecture degree from Cornell in 1911. For the 1921 Carnival, he executed the magnificent Magallanes Exposition Building, that had 5 high entrance arches surmounted by figural statues and the Main Entrance to the Carnival that had five expansive gateways book-ended with domed structures topped with fancy spires.

Inside, theThrone Hall of the Auditorium featured an ornate central dome supported by columns, sheltering the throne of the Queen like a baldochine.

Mapua would go on to design and build the Manila City Hall, Manila Custom’s House, Agrifina Circle, the Post Office Building and the Leyte Capitol. In 1925, he founded the Mapua Institute of Technology (nowMapua University), which became the premier architecture and engineering school of the country.

Carlos Barretto holds the distinction as the first pensionado architect, having graduated three years earlier than Mapua, earning his degree in 1908 from the prestigious Drexel University in Philadelphia

He was the second (after Mapua) to be officially registered as an architect in 1921, as required by law that was passed by the National Assembly that year, one of 22 Filipinos.

Barretto designed the Carnival infrastructures of 1935, built on exuberantArt Deco motif that was the prevailing style of the Commonwealth years. After the Liberation, a group of Filipino architects that included Barretto,organized themselves into the Philippine Institute of Architects which proved to be of great help to the Philippines’ post-war recovery.

was the Tondo-born child of Luis Arellano and Bartola de Guzman. His first interest was painting, studying under Fabian de la Rosa and Lorenzo Guerrero. After graduating from Ateneo in 1908, he pursued architecture as a government scholar at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1911, before finishing his course at Drexel, where Barrettoo had finished a few years before.

Trained in Beaux Arts, Arellano worked briefly in New York before his return to to the Philippines. In 1922, he was named as the chief architect of the Manila Carnival, creating the grand neoclassic edifices that complemented the Graeco-Roman theme of the national fair.

Arellanowould go on to design the Metropolitan Theater in 1935, his best-known work, plus the Jones Bridge, the Legislative Building, the Bank of the Philippine Islands and the Malcolm Hall of the University of the Philippines and the U.S. Embassy. After his retirement in 1956,Arellano returned to painting, his first passion.

For at least 2 decades, the Carnival City of Manila was transformed by these accomplished architects, with their gift of design—creating landscapes of sheer fantasies and building gateways to new worlds of romance, royalty and revelry, fascinating feasts for all the nation’s eyes to see. The Crystal Arcade was one of the most modern buildings located along the Escolta, the country's then premier business district.

Shopping around the city is one of the best things to do in Manila. Long before the existence of modern Philippine shopping mall complexes such as Rustan's, Shoemart, Robinson's, and Ayala, the Crystal Arcade is considered the first shopping mall in the Philippines.

The Crystal Arcade was designed in the art deco style, a style prevalent in the 1920s to the 1940s. It was to be one of Luna's masterpieces, with the building finish resembled that of a gleaming crystal. To make such thing possible, he infused the sleek and streamline art deco design with crytal-like glass in his design for the building.

Eventually, in the 1960s, the Crystal Arcade was demolished to pave way for the post-war revival of the Escolta. Its successor, the new Philippine National Bank Building, designed by Carlos Argüelles, replaced the Crystal Arcade, the Lyric Theater, and the Brias Roxas Building.