Escolta

MANILA’S HISTORIC HIGH STREET. Money and power once passed the old Calle Escolta. The Governor-General with his escolta or escorts passed by this road from Malacanang on his way to his office in Intramuros. At the time when Jose Rizal’s Crisostomo Ibarra strolled old Binondo, cobblestones imported from Hongkong  paved the historic thoroughfare. The old rows of Chinese stores called camarines were replaced by glorified bahay-na-bato adorned with Neo-Classical elements like Greek columns and caryatids.

In the 1900’s, Escolta became the country’s premier shopping destination. It was home to high-end stores La Estrella del Norte and Puerta del Sol which marked the east and west entrances of the narrow thoroughfare. Manila’s elite purchased fine household items at H.E. Heacocks and Oceanic. Fashionable clothing were displayed at Berg’s. The gentry buy quality leather and shoes at Hamilton Brown and Walkover Shoes. Botica Boie mixed potent medicines and served the best soda and clubhouse sandwich in town.

ESCOLTA SENTINELS. As we emerged from the gate at right side of Sta. Cruz Church, two impressive buildings attracted us to cross the bridge spanning Estero de la Reina.

The majestic buildings, one with fancy Art Deco elements and another in an elegant Beaux-Arts architecture stood face-to-face each other as if competing in grandness at the entrance of Calle Escolta.

ART DECO PEREZ-SAMANILLO BUILDING. By the second half of the 2oth century, the jazzed-up architectural style known as Art Deco manifested in the Philippines. In Escolta, the Perez-Samanillo Building is one of the few surviving specimens of the Art Deco age in the city.

Built in 1928 by Andres Luna de San Pedro, the pink Art Deco building was once described as Manila’s foremost business address. It prides itself in enticing would be tenants of maximized space, abundant lighting and ventilation and a large amount of architectural and decorative elements. While looking at the building’s awesome façade, our eyes were drawn at its central bay that rises towards a crowning block rendered with a bass relief of the Creation.

BEAUX-ARTS REGINA BUILDING. Facing the Art Deco Perez-Samanillo Building, in graceful white Beaux-Arts architecture is the Regina Building . Built in 1934 also attributed to Juan Luna’s son – Andres Luna de San Pedro, it was originally designed as a three-floor commercial building. When the de Leon family bought the building from the Roxases, a fourth floor was added by architect Fernando Ocampo -founder of the UST College of Architecture.

The senate staff of the late Senator Vicente Madrigal rented a suite in Regina Building while on the same floor across the hall was the office Madrigal Shipping, then the world’s largest tramp steamship company.

LANDMARK STRUCTURES. The Burke Building was the location of the first elevator in the Philippines. The building was named after the cardiologist William J. Burke who introduced and installed the first electrocardiograph in the country. Other landmark structures in Escolta are the charming pre-war Natividad Building that evokes a café in a Parisian neighborhood and the 1933 Calvo Building with its stunning beaux-arts architecture.

American war correspondent Robert Stewart sent the first signal of the radio station DZBB from a makeshift studio on the fourth floor of the Calvo Building. This historic event was the first broadcast of the Kapuso Network GMA channel 7.

ESCOLTA THEATERS. There were two theater cinemas along Escolta –Lyric and Capitol. Both high class movie houses brought the glitz and glitter of Hollywood to Manila. Lyric Theater was an Art Deco masterpiece of Pablo Antonio while Capitol Theater was designed by Juan Nakpil. The former was been demolished while the latter is awaiting to be restored.

Capitol Theater stood majestically amidst its decaying and dilapidated shell. Built in the 1935, this Art Deco jewel once had mounted on its balcony a wall mural by Filipino modernist Vitorio Edades. On the face of its western tower were bas-reliefs attributed to Francesco Ricardo Monti. These relieves show allegorical characters in traje de mestiza, one holding a mask and another holding a lyre frame by evocative Art Deco lines and curves.

EPILOGUE. From Sta. Cruz Church, our Escolta walk ends at Plaza Moraga. Named after the first parish priest of Paco, Fray Fernando de Moraga, the plaza was the site of the first ice cream parlor in the country. Clarke’s Café became a sensation when it opened in 1899.

From the foot of Jones Bridge we walked towards the stately Chaco Building and slipped under the Filipino-Chinese Friendship Arch to begin the Binondo Heritage Walk. But that’s another story.