For today’s #BuiltTraditionThursday series, we feature one of the structures displayed at the Placuna placenta (capis) exhibition, the Legarda Elementary School. Located in Sampaloc, Manila amidst the residential zone of the district, Paaralang Legarda or Legarda Elementary School stands on a large block bounded by Jacobo Fajardo, Craig, Sergio H. Loyola, and Eduardo Quintos Streets.

Paaralang Legarda is one of the Gabaldon Schoolhouses in Manila. During the American period, education was a prime concern hence school building construction was a priority in infrastructure development. Gabaldon Act (Act. No. 1801) was introduced by Congressman Isauro Gabaldon of Nueva Ecija and was enacted by the Philippine Legislature on the 20th of December in 1907. With William E. Parsons as the architect, the standardized design considers the tropical climate, earthquakes, insect infestation, local building materials, styles, and motifs. The curriculum also largely shaped the planning of the school buildings, which considers learning and teaching spaces especially for home economics and livelihood programs. 

Established in 1922, Paaralang Legarda displays a Victorian style of architecture. From the southeast side along J. Fajardo Street, the entrance opens to a driveway and garden with lush and rich foliage. Coming to view is the wooden main building designed by Andres Luna de San Pedro. The main building, with an over-all 60.60-meter length and 49.95-meter width, is H-shaped in plan. The portico’s deck is skirted by low stone balusters and leads the eye to the central part of the building as it is topped off by a main gable with wooden bracket articulation. The mansard roof, with projecting small gables and dormers, are architectural elements indicating American influence. Portions of the mansard roof behind the main gable have wrought iron grilles on edges with a turret at its center. Exterior walls are made of wood with weathercut sidings. Another distinctive feature is regularly occurring eaves brackets in simple straight and curving embellishment.

One feature of Gabaldon schoolhouse are awning-type windows with capis shell panes originally seen on the main building of Paaralang Legarda. Now, it was replaced by modern sets of glass jalousies while the capis shell panels on its transoms are retained. On the main gable at the main building’s central axis emphasizes a half circular window in sunburst pattern which originally has capis shell panes. 

The Legarda Elementary School exemplifies not only a venue of learning and development, but also a historical structure with aesthetic value worthy of preservation and appreciation. Drop by the Placuna placenta exhibition at Gallery 20 of the National Museum of Fine Arts to see and learn more about the use of capis shell windows in Manila’s built heritage.  

Text and illustrations by Ar. Bernadette B. Balaguer and photos by Erick E. Estonanto and Ar. Armando Arciaga III | NMP AABHD

Continuing with the #TrowelTuesday’s November theme on mortuary topics in the context of Philippine archaeology, we are featuring the ancient burial spaces and places to better understand past cultures.

Spaces and places for the dead in the Philippines during ancient times were found in varied environments and locales such as caves, open sites, and coastal or inland locations. 

The earliest evidence for deliberate burials in the Philippines is thus far found within the cave and rockshelter locale of Ille Cave in El Nido, Palawan, where evidence of cremation burials dated 9000 years ago were found. Caves in karst landscapes are conventional spaces for the dead throughout the Philippine Neolithic (4200 to 2500 years ago) and Metal Age (2500–1500 years ago), as demonstrated by several sites in Duyong Cave and the Dewil Valley in Palawan; Arku Cave in Peñablanca, Cagayan; Ayub Cave in Maitum, Sarangani; and the Kulaman Plateau in Sultan Kudarat (formerly South Cotabato). 

While funerary sites in caves are common, some cultures preferred to bury their dead in open areas especially in the later Metal, Protohistoric, and Historic periods. These open cemeteries were found along coasts, riverbanks, or inland areas. For instance, coastal areas were chosen locales for the 2500-year-old jar burials and 300- to 400-year-old boat-shaped stone cairns in Batanes (read more: https://tinyurl.com/BatanesBoatShapedBurials); the 14th–16th-century inhumations in Calatagan, Batangas; and the late 16th–early 17th-century burials of Boljoon, Cebu (read here: https://tinyurl.com/BoljoonEarlyHistoricBurials). 

Meanwhile, locales along riverbanks of Santa Ana, Manila in the 12th to 14th century, and inland spaces for the 15th-century jar burials in Cabarruan, Solana, Cagayan were preferred cemetery spaces by other cultural groups.

As human responses to death are often dictated by society, the choice of burial spaces can reveal cosmologies of past cultures. Patterns found in archaeological data such as landscapes and iconography in artifacts suggest a linkage between people, spaces, and ancient cosmologies through time. Decorative motifs in ceramic artifacts, specifically in images such as sun, bird, and reptile, suggest that past cultures in the Philippines subscribed to a pan-regional cosmology of a tripartite universe that was prevalent across Southeast Asia in antiquity.

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Text by Alexandra de Leon and posters by Timothy James Vitales | NMP Archaeology Division

© National Museum of the Philippines (2021)