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Before Taft Avenue got choked
Source: Inquirer
Author: Augusto F. Villalon
Date: 1999-05-10
 
SOON after the installation of the United States colonial

government, it commissioned Daniel Burnham, a noted Chicago

architect who became one of the most prominent American

architects of the century, to produce a master plan for the areas

of Manila outside of Intramuros. His American imprint on the

city pushed Manila into the 20th century.



Taking Paris as his inspiration and in keeping with the verdant

''City Beautiful'' planning concepts popular in the early 20th

century, Burnham proposed wide tree-lined boulevards mixed

with an abundance of open green space. Roxas (then called

Dewey) Boulevard was designed to be the city's window to

Manila Bay.



Starting at Luneta, itself a major city park that cut inland from

the seashore to end at Taft Avenue, Dewey Boulevard was

conceived as a broad tree-shaded parkway with a seaside

promenade and a wide tropical park that flanked both sides of

the road.



The major buildings of the new regime were to be the milestones

on Taft Avenue. Unlike the ones built by the previous Spanish

government, the new buildings were all civic structures that

architecturally symbolized the new order envisioned for the

country.



Taft Avenue begins at the southern bank of the Pasig,

stretching in a straight line from the foot of the graceful,

neoclassic Manila Post Office designed by the architect Juan

Arellano. The broad avenue, punctuated by government

buildings, opened the city to the south.



Distinctly Filipino flavor



The grouping of buildings on the Taft Avenue edge of the

Luneta, neoclassical in design like the Post Office, was to house

the National Museum. Across the street, the Philippine Normal

School was constructed in a style adapted from traditional

Filipino-Spanish colonial architecture.



Building in concrete (a new material introduced by the

Americans) allowed a drastic simplification of the heavy

proportions of the old bahay na bato. However, the roof still

remained steeply pitched, covered in terra-cotta tile with the

familiar generous overhangs protecting large capiz shell

windows from the tropical sun and rain.



The arrangement of the volumes and spaces, the generous use

of wood, and the detailing evoked but did not mimic the old

bahay na bato structures. It was definitely a new, 20th-century

architecture. However, the flavor was distinctly Filipino.



A few blocks away, the Philippine General Hospital had the

same look but on a larger scale. Its series of low wings shaded

by deep arcades opened into interior gardens that ventilated

and lighted the wards.



The wings connected to a central entrance pavilion, a grand

arch deeply incised into a tall, rectangular tile-roofed block,

neoclassical in inspiration and detailing but capturing the new

Filipino-American look.



Passing the vanished rotunda of San Andres southward, the

three-story De La Salle College is another tropical adaptation of

the neoclassical style.



The composition of the De La Salle facade follows the classical

composition of the traditional Italian alazzpi: a heavily detailed

ground floor, a pronounced piano nobile (main floor) above it,

followed by upper floors of shorter proportions. A gracious

central entrance portico, now covered from view by insensitive

remodeling along Taft Avenue, is the focus of the H-shaped

wings of the structure.



For maximum light and ventilation, classrooms are strung

between front and rear breezeways that have the largest

openings possible to catch the fickle tropical breeze.



American symbol



The Taft Avenue buildings of the early 20th century stood as

symbols of the American vision for the Philippines: aside from

an efficient civil service, the other hallmarks were improved

public services (the Post Office), respect for the Filipino culture

(the National Museum complex), emphasis on education

(Philippine Normal School), and improved social and welfare

services (Philippine General Hospital).



The Taft Avenue homes, on the other hand, reflected the more

open, relaxed Filipino lifestyle of the day. Unlike the solid

Intramuros houses that lined both sides of narrow streets, the

Taft Avenue house of the early 20th century was set back from

a tree-shaded street, surrounded by gardens, a large structure

with tropical high ceilings and wide openings that led to

balconies on the upper floors or to covered porches on the

ground floor. Instead of looking into itself as the old bahay na

bato did, the new houses incorporated the garden as a living

space.



Like the bahay na bato before them, the new houses adapted

western styles to suit the Filipino environment. An excellent

example is the elegant group of 1940s Art Deco homes that are

slowly disappearing from the long block between San Andres

and Vito Cruz.



At the Pasay end of Taft Avenue, the prominent architect

Tomas Mapa shifted from his neoclassical vocabulary of the

then De La Salle College. In the 1930s, he constructed his home

in the an exuberant, individualistic Filipino Art Deco style.

Barely visible from the street, the wings of the house are

gathered by a three-story domed tower embellished with

delightful, stylized Deco detailing.



Taft Avenue was conceived as the grand spine leading from the

Pasig at the heart of the city that skirts one border of

Intramuros, opens up to the Luneta and Manila Bay, circling the

Rotunda of San Andres before continuing to the far-off suburb

of Pasay. It was an acacia-lined procession through a mix of

civic architecture and the best residential architecture in the

country. What a rich urban tapestry it was.



Taft Avenue could never have been Manila's Fifth Avenue. In

its day, its urban feel was as if it was Manila's more intimately

and modestly scaled version of the Champs Elysees in Paris.

Taft was a Grand Boulevard in every sense of the word.



It had the ingredients of a great urban space: monumentality

heightened by pockets of intimacy, sweeping axial views, and

most of all, a collection of architecture which could only be

found in Manila and in no other city of the world. It was a

landmark.



Thankfully, the Burnham vision for Taft Avenue was allowed to

exist for a while, at least, until our generation finally choked Taft

with visual and environmental pollution. The avenue could

have been among the most marvelous of urban spaces that we

in Manila could have proudly shared with each other and the

world. Taft Avenue is no more.



Your comments and suggestions are welcome. Please e-mail

them to afv@skyinet.net
 

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