Manila Central Post Office

NOSTALGIC FOR CHRISTMAS CARDS. Times are changing. There are more and more things to be nostalgic about. As a child, receiving and sending Christmas cards signaled the happiest season of the year. I remember my folks would start writing Christmas cards in lengthy notes and sending them to the post office as early as November so that our relatives in the US would receive them in time for the holidays. By December, I would regularly open the mail box attached to our gate (a feature we rarely see in contemporary houses today) to gather the sealed envelopes and peel off the stamps.

Nowadays, we receive holiday greetings through instant text messages and emails most of the time, in a form of copied or templated greetings. We seldom write Christmas cards in all seriousness and send them via the post office. Longing for childhood Christmases, I went to the Manila Central Post Office a few days before Christmas to send some greeting cards to friends just like how my parents and grandparents did it in the past.

POST OFFICE BY THE RIVER. The Manila Central Post Office is located in what used to be a sprawling Plaza Arroceros that extended far to where the Metropolitan Theater and Manila City Hall now stands. It was renamed Plaza Lawton during the Commonwealth Era and recently as Liwasang Bonifacio with a monument to the revolutionary leader, Andres Bonifacio as the centerpiece. At the rear of this impressive building, is the primordial Pasig River flanked by Jones and MacArthur Bridges. To build a post office by the ancient river was strategic during an era when goods and mail were transported via steam-powered vessels.

Bathe in mid-morning sunlight, the monumental structure glimmered like a Roman temple to an important god. The entire length of the main building is elevated from the road by a flight of stairs that leads to a magnificent colonnade guarded by sixteen Ionic columns.

THE BURNHAM PLAN. Past the arcade, people enter into the vastness of the main lobby through a march of doors and transact in the tall grilled windows. Clean, elegant lines, graceful and dignified this iconic building is a manifestation of the Burnham Plan.

The Neoclassical style dominated the architecture of government buildings during the American years. The Manila Central Post Office was merely a part of a greater design by Daniel Burnham. The famous urban planner was sent to the Philippines in the early 1900s to draw a plan for a modern state capitol. Burnham’s ambitious design for Manila was to mirror Washington D.C. with a Capitol Hill that would rise along Taft Avenue facing the bay (A tasteless Torre de Manila occupies this area today), a reflecting pool in the center with the Rizal Monument at the Luneta end. Just like the National Mall, government buildings would be arranged in a formal pattern around this quadrangle. Of the proposed neoclassical structures for Manila, only the Legislative, Finance and Agriculture buildings that now house National Museum complex, and the Manila Central Post Office were completed.

OBRA NI JUAN ARELLANO. The US-trained Filipino architect, Juan Arellano designed the Manila Central Post Office building. His works include the original Jones Bridge (with allegorical figures in Beaux Arts style that we can only see in old photos), the Legislative Building, the Metropolitan Theater and other iconic structures that represent the architectural face of the American Era around the country.

Construction of the post office began in 1926 under the supervision of the engineering firm Pedro Siochi and Company. The post office sustained heavy damages during the Liberation in 1945 but it survived the hasty reconstruction a year after the war. The postwar building still bears the chastity of the original and stands as a memorial to Arellano’s magnum opus.

AMERICAN TROPICAL. After depositing my mail, I started exploring the building for the first time. Though European in look and feel, the post office building is designed for the tropics. Generous light and air at main lobby streams through the grillwork and awning windows above the doors. The ornate grillwork is repeated in the staircases that leads to the upper floors of the five-floor building.

The two semi-circular drums on each end of the rectangular mast is topped with half domes. An atrium lends natural light to the parcel and registered mail sections. The highly decorated ceiling and wainscoting are attributed to the sculptor Isabelo Tampingco, whom Arellano often worked with.

POSTAL AND PHILATELIC HISTORY. A postal museum is set in one corner of the main lobby. Displayed were equipment used by the post office in earlier times to weigh and postmark letters and packages. Also on exhibit is a maquette of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) Monument by French sculptor Charles René de Paul de Saint-Marceaux that shows five Beaux Arts figures floating around the globe representing the continents. The granite and marble monument was erected in 1909 at the UPU headquarters in Switzerland.

The postal museum occasionally hosts a philatelic congress to display collectible stamps. Special tours were conducted to retell the beginnings of the postal services in the country. The first post office was established in Manila in 1779. It was housed in the Aduana by the riverside of Intramuros. The first postage stamp was issued in 1854 bearing the profile of the reigning monarch of the time, Isabela II. The word Filipinas first appeared on stamps in 1872 with King Amadeo’s portrait. The last stamp issues by Spanish colonial government bears the image of the boy king, Alfonso XIII in 1898. During the Philippine Revolution, crudely printed stamps were issued with the word Filipinas and emblems of the Katipunan. In 1906, the US Insular Government issued its first stamps. Images of Jose Rizal and paintings of Fernando Amorsolo appeared in stamps during the American Era. During the Japanese Occupation, stamps were used for cultural propaganda with text that says Congratulations/Fall of Bataan and Corregidor 1942. Stamps in this period also bear a juxtaposition of the images of Mayon Volcano and Mount Fuji with text in Nipongo.

LOCK BOX. At the side of the postal exhibit are stairs leading to the Lock Box area at the lower floor. Post Office (PO) boxes were popular alternatives to mailing addresses. Lock boxes can be rented for a fee.

Doors at the lock box section leads to the back doors that opens to a wharf by the Pasig River. Urban legends says that the lock box section were used for tortures and as a prison during the Japanese Occupation.

EPILOGUE: MONUMENT TO SELF-GOVERNMENT. A fitting finale to that mid-morning trip to the Manila Central Post Office is to view the heroic statue of the mamang kartero facing the flag framed by the Arellano’s columns in homage to the couriers that delivered greeting cards that gave me happy memories of childhood Christmases.

In the fast internet age, it maybe a hard sell to keep the tradition of sending mail through the post office. However, Arellano’s neoclassical magnum opus must be preserved as a monument, a tasteful reminder to generations of that time when Filipinos were being readied for self-governance and democracy.

– January 14, 2019 | TOF 11th Year Anniversary