Finding 1920s Manila in 2013 Manila

6 February 2013

            Part of the fun of being in Manila is trying to find the locations of some of the buildings I’m writing about. Sadly, though, the bombings of WWII, numerous typhoons, and constant development mean that there are very few buildings left from the 1920s (indeed, one of the projects of the Institute of Philippine Culture is to identify and document all the pre-1960 buildings in metro-Manila). In earlier posts (here and here), we wrote about the Manila Hotel, which was rebuilt after it was destroyed in WWII, and the Luneta, which also has changed quite a lot due to the addition of reclaimed land and other developments.

            Aside from these two sites, though, I’ve had to do some historical imagining when visiting the locations of buildings that are no longer present. I’ve done these sorts of historical expeditions only to a few place, to one of the cabarets I write about, to the neighborhood that housed most of the movie and music theaters, and to the old shopping district where all the records and sheet music were sold in the 1920s.

Cabarets

Lerma Cabaret ad from The Manila Times

            In the 1920s, cabarets were among the most common places to experience jazz. These were basically large ballrooms that served dinner and drinks and provided patrons with a live band. They also employed Filipina bailarinas with whom one could dance for a small fee (or often take home for another charge). Because of their ties with prostitution, many of the cabarets were pushed just outside the city limits of Manila. In the 1920s, Manila was still just Manila, not metro-Manila. American real-estate partners were just starting to develop San Juan heights and Makati, now the main business center with lots of skyscrapers, was still a largely empty swamp. Marikina, where we live, was a big river valley known for good farming.

In the 1920s, Manila was only "Manila," the green part right on the bay

            There were numerous cabarets scattered around the city’s edge, but the three I focus on the most were the Lerma Cabaret in Caloocan (on what is now the Far Eastern University Campus), the San Juan Cabaret (on North Domingo Street just past the San Juan Bridge), and the Santa Ana Cabaret (across the street from the Sta. Ana race track in Makati). All of these buildings are now gone, destroyed by typhoons or bulldozers. The site of the San Juan Cabaret, though, is quite close to a train stop, so one afternoon I took the train to the V. Mapa station and walked a few blocks to the San Juan Bridge and onto North Domingo Street. Now Domingo Street is just another narrow, crowded street but there are some older-looking buildings here and there. It was interesting to walk over the bridge, though, since the trolley used to have its last stop right before the San Juan Bridge and revelers would walk one minute only, as the advertisements said, to get to the cabaret. Since the sites of the Lerma and Sta. Ana Cabarets are slightly more inconvenient to get to, and there’s nothing there any more, I doubt that I’ll trek out to see their former location. 

crossing San Juan Bridge onto N. Domingo St.

Sta. Cruz – Rizal Ave and Azcarraga St. (now Recto)

            The train that runs East-West through metro-Manila stops at Recto Station, right next to Bilibid, Manila’s city jail. Back in the 1920s, this was the site of the city’s entertainment/theater district, running mostly North-South along Rizal Avenue. Again, nothing much is left here and the neighborhood looks indistinguishable from the rest of Manila. I don’t have any photographs of this because I didn’t want to take my camera out as I walked.

Escolta

      The Escolta is the famed historic shopping street that stretches for about five blocks along the north side of the Pasig River between Jones Bridge and Sta. Cruz Bridge. I’m not entirely sure when the Escolta ceased to be the central shopping district, but my guess (without looking anything up) is that it was probably around WWII. Between the late 1800s and WWII, though, the Escolta and nearby streets were home to the city’s main department, music, and other sorts of stores. Since there are some buildings left from around the 1920s (mostly the 1930s, though), I was interested to explore this neighborhood. 

Map from 1924: Escolta is the street just north of the river

The old Plaza Goiti (taken from Carriedo station)

The Carriedo stop on the LRT 1 looks out over Plaza Goiti (now called Plaza Lacson), the eastern edge of the Escolta. Plaza Goiti used to be one the main interchange site for the trolley lines, and photos from the early 1920s show it to be a bustling spot. Tom’s Dixie Kitchen was a well-known restaurant there that featured jazz some evenings and was a favorite hang-out for many musicians and Americans.  It's still a busy place today.

Regina Building

The shopping district of the Escolta was bounded on the eastern side by the Regina Building, which is still standing. Its top floor comes from an addition in 1934 but otherwise it’s similar to photos I’ve seen from the ‘20s. The Regina Building was home to Erlanger & Galinger Department store, one of the largest importers of U.S. products. E&G were Manila’s sole distributors of Victor Records, which had one of the biggest catalogues of dance music from the U.S.

Calvo Building

Farther down the street is the Calvo Building, also from the 1930s, which now houses a small Escolta museum (just ask the guard and he can unlock it for you for a fee). Inside were some newspapers clippings and photographs, as well as a model of the Escolta from the late 1930s-1940s.

Inside the Escolta Museum in the Calvo Building

At the other end of the Escolta, in Plaza Moraga, was Beck’s department store, another big importer of U.S. goods and distributor of Columbia Records, probably Victor’s biggest competitor. Smaller music stores on some of the side streets, such as Calle David and T. Pinpin, sold records from other labels and sheet music by Filipino composers.

Manila’s history and environment hasn’t allowed for much stability or permanence in many neighborhoods. I’m not really sure that I gain anything tangible from visiting these sites, but it’s been interesting to stand at an intersection and try to match it up the image of an old photograph, or to try to fit it to descriptions that people wrote almost 100 years ago, back when Manila was known as “the Pearl of the Orient.”