Muralla cor Recoletos Sts. Intramuros, Manila 1002 P.O. BOX769

Monday through Saturdays 8am – 5pm

Rainwater was forever flooding the sala so my wife and I decided to roof the rear terrace and make it into a library. We removed the heavy wood and glass sliding doors, replacing them with arches and columns that I discovered in a junk shop on España near Welcome Rotonda. That was in 1967 and at the arch’s center were the carved initials of the just elected President, “FM.” Sayang, I thought, that the initials on the other side were not “IM.”  How was I to know that in the fullness of time, “LM” would be perfect for 2022.

We also wanted to have a divider between the living and dining areas and I happened to pass by an old house on Nagtahan Street that was being demolished. It was an ancient house surrounded by clumps of palmeras, elegantly painted white with green trimmings. I stopped and bargained with the demolition foreman for a truckload of molave ventanilla balusters. Thick with layers of green paint, I had them shaved and mounted in four layers by our dining table, they’re on their second life.

It turns out that the balusters have a history all their own. I found out years later that the demolished house was that of Domingo Franco, president of La Liga Filipina, friend of Jose Rizal, and one of the Trece Mártires de Bagumbayan, Katipunan members who were executed on Jan. 11, 1897. Franco’s mother was a Tuason and the house could have belonged to the Hacienda de Nagtajan that was bought by the Tuasons after the 1768 Jesuit expulsion. Not only that, Franco was the grandfather of a friend, the late Celia Diaz Laurel.

The narra floors of two upstairs rooms have a similarly distinguished past. They came from the San Fernando, Pampanga home of Jose Abad Santos who appears on our 1,000-peso note (before being replaced by a bird, that is). He was chief justice and briefly acting president during the Commonwealth. In 1942 he was captured and executed by the Japanese in Lanao.

Rather more modest but just as distinguished are half a dozen cement balusters that came from President Manuel L. Quezon’s mansion on Roberts Street, Pasay. The house was destroyed in World War II and the ruins were cleared decades later. Half a dozen leftovers are now in my garden.

Much of the ironwork at home is recycled. Supposedly from a grand Binondo house are six beautiful ventanilla grilles made of thick iron rods with decorative iron and lead flourishes. Four continue as ventanillas under second floor windows. Buntís grilles on five windows are from Pampanga. Trumping them provenance-wise are Art Deco wrought iron grilles by National Artist Guillermo Tolentino. His house on Retiro and Blumentritt Streets in La Loma was demolished and some parts ended up with me. They look nice painted white and mounted on an otherwise blank outside wall.

With much of our forests gone, just about all the wood I can brag about are recycled. The long 30-inch wide planks on the bedroom corridor are of the rare supa wood. They are naturally shiny brown with yellow streaks and came from a former residence on Lepanto Street that was a noisy printing press before demolition. The door leading to my rear garden used to be in a San Nicolas house. It’s of two panels that open wide for a caruaje and has a pedestrian door on one panel. A 1969 Marcos election flyer was still pasted there when I got it. The wide main stairs are alternating two-inch thick light molave and dark tindalo planks from someone’s vanished ancestral home.

I also doze off sometimes imagining the life and times of the owner of my bed’s headboard. They were 3’6” tall window panels of solid molave, well joined, and with elaborate ornamentation. There’s a tiny and inconspicuously located peephole angled downward from the inside. The homeowner must have been cultured to commission fine carvings on his windows and well-to-do to be able to afford sculpted first class wood. He must have lived somewhere dangerous for him, however, to need sturdy windows and to surreptitiously check who was outside when darkness came.

Does anyone else live with things once owned by heroes, friends, presidents, chief justices, Binondo and San Nicolas super-rich, and security-conscious pandák landlords?

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