Hidden Capitol

Weekends are for spending with family. For Filipinos, this means Sunday lunches enjoying endless food, endless debates on politics and endless noise from the kids. Going home to our families can be a such a hassle nowadays because of traffic and the distance that urban sprawl has put between us all, but it’s worth it.

On the way to the family compound each week, I pass the Kapitolyo rotunda in Pasig City. I’ve always been fond of this rotunda, one of the few left in the metropolis. This particular circle is unique because it fronts the elegant Rizal Provincial Capitol and its extensive grounds. Being unexpectedly early last weekend, I drove into the compound and rediscovered one of the metropolis’ hidden gems of public architecture and open space.

I had heard that the place was abandoned since Pasig was engulfed by Metropolitan Manila and became a city. The capital of Rizal province necessarily had to be relocated (to Antipolo). I wondered what was to become of this site of recent, yet still valuable, heritage.

Capitol Memories

The first time I ventured into the site was in the Seventies, to get my student driver’s license. That was my initiation into the standard queue-for-a-day-unless-you-pay experience with the Philippine government. That aside (and the LTO was a minor building on one side of the compound), you had to admire the commodious grounds, the well-kept lawns and the regal bearing of the main complex, qualities which few contemporary civic complexes can claim.

The Rizal Provincial Capitol was completed in 1962 for the then princely sum of P784,000. It was the crowning achievement of a dashing governor and an equally dapper architect. Governor Isidro S. Rodriguez had been head honcho of the country’s premier province since 1955. His progressive administration brought the province out of the post-war doldrums and into an industrialized jet-age world.

It did not matter that the jets actually landed in Pasay City. There were only four cities in the metropolitan conglomeration in 1962 – Manila, Pasay, Caloocan and Quezon City. Rizal’s provincial territory and authority covered everything else, including what now belongs to Metro Manila. These were the towns of Makati, San Juan, Mandaluyong, Las Piñas, Malabon, Marikina, Muntinlupa, Navotas, Parañaque, Pateros, Taguig, Valenzuela and, of course, Pasig, the capital.

In those days, there was a more discernible difference between city and country, between Manila and its suburbs. Highway 54 (EDSA) was the outer marker where industries and warehouse complexes were mushrooming like mad in the ’50s and ’60s. Shaw Boulevard went past that circumference and went further down to a plateau of land known then as a tektite field, before proceeding down to old Pasig town. This field is where the capitol building now stands. This, however, was not the first site, as the original provincial capitol of Rizal was built elsewhere and by a previous regime.

Capitol Colonialism

Rizal province was formed in 1901 by the Philippine Commission. It was Dr. Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera’s idea to name it after Dr. Jose Rizal, although Rizal himself was not born there. That minor issue aside, the province was destined to be the center of American colonial rule because it supported and protected the capital, Manila.

The projection of this power and governance lay in putting order into the scheme of things nationwide. Part of the strategy of the Americans was to project this authority through the visible presence of provincial capitol buildings built in imperious Neo-classic style. Most of these structures were given priority in construction and by 1911, over 31 had been built.

In 1910, Rizal province had the first provincial capitol that used the then new technology of reinforced concrete. The Neo-classic designs adopted at that point by the Insular architect William E. Parsons was a spare one. Eventually, this style became more ornate as Filipino contractors learned the art of faux-stone embellishment (or what they eventually called pre-cast concrete).

The site was a large estate right beside the Pasig River and within easy reach of a Meralco electric train line. Most travel then, to the east of Manila, was by this train or via steamers that plied the river to reach the towns of Laguna Lake. It was a picturesque site well-suited for the goals of the American colonial government and perfect for the design intent of the architect.

Parsons was trained in architecture and the layout of civic buildings. He brought over from the States the latest trends in planning, which put emphasis on strong civic cores, well-designed streets and urban landscape. He set the guidelines for Rizal as well as all the other provincial capitols as follows:

"Buildings of provincial governments, like those of any other architectural composition, should be arranged in a logical and convenient scheme. The order and system which exist in the form of provincial government should prevail and find expression in an orderly plan for grouping buildings ... Unlike municipal buildings and markets, provincial buildings need not be near the centers of population. In fact, a location at some distance from the business centers is to be preferred for both practical and aesthetic reasons."

Parsons put emphasis on a landscaped setting, stating that, "Provincial buildings should be in a park, in a position of dignity ... Here they are removed from the noise and dust of the streets and from the danger of fire spreading from neighboring buildings ... The park which surrounds the buildings ought to have well-kept lawns with shade trees and blossoming plants, which the tropics like no other climate afford. Quite the most beautiful thing in the vicinity, it ought to set a good example in the way of beautifying the streets and plazas of the municipalities."

This Yale-trained architect further suggested, "Each province should maintain a small nursery in its provincial park for the propagation of trees and plants from seeds and cuttings ... The nursery could furnish young trees for planting along not only streets and plazas, but also the provincial roads."

The capitol was eventually extended until it filled over three hectares of land. It had generous space and a wonderfully landscaped riverside promenade. Most of that was lost in the war and in the aftermath of a province struggling to recover from the war.

Capitol Modernism

In the mid-Fifties, industry started to boom but the goods, services and people no longer used the river; they turned to roads for most transport needs. This led Pasig town, and most other towns along the water, to turn their backs to the Pasig and concentrate development along major arteries.

This brings us back to the "new" provincial capitol that Governor Rodriguez planned for Rizal. Although a post-war building was erected on this, Rodriguez sought to give it a new face and extended functions. He hired a progressive young architect, Ruperto Gaite, and plans were drawn up quickly. Gaite, along with many of his generation of Filipino architects, was heavily influenced by the new architecture and planning espoused by the famous "Team 10." This avant-garde group, that included Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, produced modernist layouts and architecture that saw the most visible expression in the new South American capital city of Brazilia.

The look and feel of Niemeyer’s architecture, replete with wrap-around sun-breakers and the extensive use of concrete in abstracted and repetitive designs, are seen in Gaite’s work. Despite this modernism, the whole complex was laid out in classical symmetry, a remnant of the previous original plan, which Gaite thoughtfully preserved for its rationality. Architect Gaite (an NU alumnus and former dean of FEU) made it work and produced a functional yet aesthetically pleasing project.

To top it all off, and to mark Dr. Jose Rizal’s birth centennial, a statue of the national hero was inaugurated at the opening of the complex. The artist’s name eludes me but it probably was the work of Anastacio Caedo, if not Guillermo Tolentino. Architect Gaite provided a restrained modern setting that melded the memorial to the main building with aplomb. The landscape, too, was controlled and simple, as civic landscapes should be (unlike the borloloy-fest of garden-show wannabes one sees assaulting our senses these days).

Capitol Lament

The buildings and landscape of the Pasig Rizal Capitol, including recreational courts and a tennis club, survive to this day. The trees have all grown to majestic heights and the structure looks almost as good as it was in 1962. Traces of neglect though, arising from recent abandonment, are starting to eat away at the picturesque views. It would be such a waste if the provincial government takes the path of privatization and sells this last vestige of taste in civic buildings to the highest bidder.

In fact, the same fate lies ahead for the older capitol and its grounds. The structure still stands amazingly whole and sits forlorn along a forgotten stretch of the Pasig River. I hear that this older compound is owned by one of those tycoons, and God knows what will happen to that older structure of our heritage.

Social, historic and cultural capital is imbedded in these capitol buildings of the past. A few still stand, in cities like Bacolod and Cebu. In those places, these structures help frame life if only in an outward aesthetic sense. One should be thankful, however, that we still have some semblance of order in the seas of urban chaos that churn relentlessly around us today.

Metro Manila has grown to encroach on nearly half of what the province of Rizal used to cover. Manila’s population is now five times that of Rizal and it is the need to house the increasing urban residents and fuel industry that eat further at the resources and the heritage of the province.

City or country, urban or rural, housing tracts or heritage. These are the binaries that are starting to put us in a bind. Filipinos are bound by tradition, yet are seemingly fatalistic when it comes to loss of life, liberty and the pursuit of sanity in modern life.

As I drive out into the traffic of Shaw Boulevard, I hope that I will not, one day, find that we have lost another piece of our precious past, another acre of arcadia, another civic space to make way for a nondescript mall and miles of parked cars. If this situation repeats in other cities, getting home to family would then be more difficult, the traffic unbearable and tradition finally replaced with a sad simulacrum of life, a capitol catastrophe indeed.

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at citysensephilstar@pacific.net.ph.