Sta. Cruz Manila

PLAZA STA. CRUZ. Centuries ago English kings and queens had to ask permission from the mayor of London before entering the ancient city. In 18th century Manila, governor-generals left their cavalry escort in Calle Escolta and walked the bridge across the estero to Plaza Sta. Cruz where the principales of Binondo would be waiting to accompany the viceroy of Spain to their wealthy district.

Plaza Sta. Cruz was to serve as neutral ground for a historic event when the British Surrendered the Key of the City of Manila to Don Simon de Anda in 1764.

STA. CRUZ CHURCH. The historic district of Sta. Cruz started as a Jesuit mission where Governor-General Alonso Fajardo founded the Colegio de San Ildefonso, on the site of the present church in the 1720s. From this developed the parish and borough of the Sta. Cruz, which the Jesuits managed until their expulsion in 1768.

Enshrined in the 17th century Sta. Cruz Church is the Nuestra Señora del Pilar whose feast is celebrated every third Sunday of October. In the olden days, the fiesta was the talk of the town for the vanity of its women, of whom it is said that they marched in the festive procession of their patroness covered with jewels from head to foot.

FUENTE DE CARRIEDO. Sta. Cruz Church is surrounded by three open spaces; Plaza Sta. Cruz in front, Plaza Goiti at the rear, and a wide street on the right leading to Calle Escolta. In the 1900s, these areas came to be known as downtown Manila.

The centerpiece of the Plaza Sta. Cruz is the 19th century Carriedo Fountain, which honors the legacy of philanthropist Don Francisco Carriedo y Perredo who left in his will the establishment of the first waterworks system for Manila.

PLAZA GOITI. On Plaza Goiti stood Monte de Piedad, where businessmen were said to hang around its porch to catch the latest news before it broke. It was in same bank where Manuel Quezon worked as a clerk before starting his political career.

Plaza Goiti, was also the city’s transportation network, where the tranvia ferried commuters to old Manila‘s major thoroughfares. Named after Martin de Goiti, the busy plaza was renamed Plaza Lacson in honor of the city’s first elected mayor, Arsenio H. Lacson.

CALLE ESCOLTA. Across the street from the right side of the church is Calle Escolta, the country’s premier shopping destination at that time. It was home to high-end stores like La Estrella del Norte and Puerta del Sol which marked the east and west entrances of the narrow thoroughfare. Fine household items can be purchased at H.E. Heacocks and Oceanic. While Fashionable clothes were displayed at Berg’s, quality leather and shoes were stocked at Hamilton Brown or Walkover Shoes. Botica Boie, mixed potent medicines and served the best soda and clubhouse sandwich in town.

MUELLES. Sta. Cruz was then already noted for its heavy traffic and thriving commerce even during the Spanish period. But the heavy traffic was on the muelles and esteros, where rafts coming from trading ships anchored in Manila Bay and cascoes that rowed from provinces unload their produce and other goods on the Muelles along Pasig River and on drop off points along esteros at Sibakong and at the foot of Escolta bridge.

The esteros that crisscrossed through and around Sta. Cruz were clean and fast-flowing then. This afforded the chief means of transportation, not only around the borough, but also to other districts like Binondo.

EPILOGUE. The major event in the district’s pre-war history was the opening of Avenida Rizal. The demolition of the all the houses that stood between Dulumbayan and Calle Salcedo caused the exodus of the district’s old time residents.

World War II gravely devastated downtown Manila. Several buildings around Plaza Sta. Cruz, along Escolta, and newly opened Avenida Rizal were heavily charred and pockmarked during the Liberation of Manila. The old Sta. Cruz Church was completely destroyed. But the image of the Virgen del Pilar was hidden in the vault of the Philippine National Bank on Escolta during the last months of the war.

– Feast Day of the Virgen del Pilar de Manila

The Church of Sta. Cruz and the British Surrender of Manila to Governor Simon de Anda

  

  

Sta. Cruz Church in Manila is surrounded by three open spaces; in front is Plaza Santa Cruz where the Carriedo Fountain is reinstalled; Plaza Goiti, now known as Plaza Lacson at the rear and a wide street on the right leading to Santa Cruz Bridge.  

 

 

Escolta –the main business street during the turn-of-the-century Manila leads to this open space from across the bridge. It was also in this surrounding plaza that the British returned the city of Manila to Gobernador Simon de Anda y Salazar after 20 months of British Occupation.

 

 

Church of Sta. Cruz

  

The area surrounding the present of Sta. Cruz began as a Jesuit mission under Rector Antonio Sedeño, the person responsible in the fortification of Intramuros using blocks of adobe. Named after the Holy Cross, the church was built and administered by the Jesuits up to 1768. 

 

 

Shortly before the expulsion of the Jesuit in the Philippines, a replica of the venerated image of the Nuestra Señora del Pillar was brought over to Sta. Cruz Church from Zaragoza, Spain.  

 

 

Tradition holds that when St. James the Apostle went to evangelize Spain, he had little success. One night on the banks of the River Ebro, the Blessed Mother appeared to him atop a pillar of jasper stone and promised him that his mission would be fruitful as he had a church erected in her honor on the site. Departing, the Blessed Mother left the pillar of jasper on which the original image still stands today in Spain. 

 

 

However, it was only in the middle of the 19^th century that the Our Lady of the Pillars was declared patroness of Sta. Cruz district, replacing San Entanislao Kostka. For next centuries up the present, she was the object of veneration among devotees of the Blessed Virgin.

 

 

British Surrender of Manila to Governor Simon de Anda

 

When England declared war on Spain in January 1762, the British invasion of Manila took place eight months later. On September 24 a squadron of thirteen British ships and 6,830 men entered Manila Bay towards the beach of Malate. The acting governor of Manila, Archbishop Manuel Rojo, received news of the war but did nothing to strengthen the Spanish army. By October 5, the British had created a breached in Intramuros’ wall. They occupied the Palacio del Gobernador and Rojo hoisted a white flag over the deserted Fort Santiago. 

 

 

Don Simon de Anda, a member of the Real Audencia slipped out of Manila  and organized a provincial government in Bacolor, Pampanga. With the help of natives, he confined the British to the area around Manila.

 

With the signing of the Treaty of Paris on February 10, 1763, the Seven Year’s War in Europe ended. The Philippines and Cuba, under the provisions of the treaty were retuned to Spain. Only upon the death of Rojo that a new governor, Francisco de la Torre, arrived from Mexico that Anda turned over the governorship. It is said that in recognition of Anda’s valor who despite being outnumbered and outgunned and despite his age (he was in his 60’s) had refused to recognized British sovereignty and led a resistance against them, Governor dela Torre discreetly claimed illness in order that the Manila would be turned over to Simon de Anda by the British.  

 

 

On the evening of April 1, 1764 at the ground surrounding Sta. Cruz Church, British commander Blackhouse, surrendered over the keys of Manila to Governor Anda. A century later, the colonial government recognized Anda’s heroic stand and honored him with a monument on that stood at Malecon del Sur (Anda Monument not erected at Bonifacio Drive at the end of Aduana Street) and a marble plaque installed on the wall of Santa Cruz Church facing Escolta.

 

The plaque below Anda’s bust are the words: 1764. IN THIS SITE THE PLAZA OF MANILA WAS RETURNED BY THE INVADING ENEMY TO THE EMINENT PATRICIAN D. SIMON DE ANDA Y. SALAZAR. FILIPINAS ERECTS THIS TO HIS MEMORY. YEAR 1870.

 

Related link:

Day of Downtown

 

 Information sources:

100 Events that Shaped the Philippines

Santa Cruz Church, A Living Heritage