Santa Mesa
Santa Mesa is a district in Manila, Philippines. It is surrounded by Pasig River on the southwestern side, by the San Juan River on its southern and eastern side. Land borders include the districts of San Miguel to Sampaloc to the north. Santa Mesa was a part of the Sampaloc district, from which it was partitioned and separated after it had its own parish in 1911; the parish is now known as Old Sta. Mesa, a street which extends from Victorino Mapa Street to Magsaysay Boulevard formely known as Santa Mesa Boulevard; the district's name comes from the Jesuits, who christened the area Hermanidad de Santa Mesa de la Misericordia. The local parish church had for its titular the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which formed part of the phrase the " Center of the Table is the Sacred Heart which all Graces and Mercy flowed down." The Tuason family are the landlords of Santa Mesa during the Spanish colonial period offered an obra pía, provided social services to the people Doña Albina Tuason donated the Land where the Church is located right at this modern days.
A more popular folk etymology is that the name is a corruption of the Spanish term Santa Misa. The Town of Santa Mesa was situated in the alluvial deposits at the confluence of Pasig and San Juan Rivers, it was owned by a Jesuits religious order during the Spanish Era, it is in this period that Santa Mesa got its name. Santa Mesa is better known for its role in the Philippine–American War, in which the area became a battlefield during the Philippine-American War; the conflict started when Pvt. William W. Grayson shot a Filipino soldier in San Juan Bridge between Santa Mesa and San Juan. Up until the early American period, Sta. Mesa was just one of the barrios that comprised the Sampaloc area of Manila. In 1911 they establish the first and oldest parish in the Philippines in honor of its Titular Patron the Sacred Heart of Jesus and became a separate religious community district, which divided Sampaloc into two parishes; the created parish is now known as the Old Santa Mesa, which extended from V. Mapa to Sta.
Mesa Boulevard. The neighborhood was composed of wealthy and aristocrats Spanish and Filipino families who built summer houses, the example the Sociego Mansion home of the Tuason Family and the Carriedo Mansion home of Governor General Peredo y' Carriedo who spearheaded the clean water system of the City of Manila it is known as the Antique House in Pureza affluent families where attracted to Santa Mesa's cooler climate and the picturesque streets that were lined with ylang-ylang trees along Santa Mesa Boulevard; the abundance of these trees started a perfume industry in Santa Mesa — flowers were harvested and the oil were exported in great quantities to perfumeries in France. The small community became the location of the hospital to treat the wounded during World War II; the town experienced its growth after the war. Santa Mesa was the site of a 1950s suburban development because of its proximity to Central Manila; the Santa Mesa Market was constructed around this period. It was a big shopping complex, became popular for the selling of Post eXchange or PX Goods from U.
S. bases in the Philippines that's why it was called Shop. Sampaloc and Santa Mesa was absorbed by Manila in the 19th Century, along with other towns and settlements; when the Congressional Districts of Manila was created, Sta. Mesa was separated from Sampaloc, falling to the jurisdiction of District 6; the national census still considers Sta. Mesa as a part of Sampaloc for statistical purposes. Santa Mesa is located in the eastern section of the City of Manila, it is bounded to the west by Lacson Avenue separating it from San Miguel. The northeast boundary of Santa Mesa is west of SM City Sta. Mesa shopping mall. Although the mall has "Santa Mesa" on its name, it is located in Quezon City near the city limits of Manila; the southwestern side of Santa Mesa is along Pasig River while the southern and eastern sides are along San Juan River. Across San Juan River are the cities of San Juan to the east and a small portion of Mandaluyong City to the southeast. Across Pasig River, are the Manila areas of Santa Ana to the south and Pandacan to the southeast.
The topography of the area is flat as some of the natural variations in elevations have been evened out due to urbanization. Bacood Banda Kawayan Pilipinas United Church of Christ in the Philippines Hampstead Gardens Philippine Independent Church Bacood Landcom Village I Mabini Shrine, former home of Apolinario Mabini, Philippines Revolution hero, located inside PUP. Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital Polytechnic University of the Philippines Recurso de Madriaga Pescado Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic School Carriedo Mansion Santa Mesa is made up of 51 Barangays. For statistical convenience for housing and population, the data for Santa Mesa is included in the data of Sampaloc. City of Manila – Official website Geographic data related to Santa Mesa at OpenStreetMap
Malate, Manila
Malate is a district of Manila, Philippines. Together with the district of Ermita, it serves as Manila's center for tourism; the name Malate is believed to be derived from a corruption of the Tagalog word maalat. Malate during the Spanish colonial period was an open space with a small fishing village. During the Spanish period, the center of activity was the Malate Church, dedicated to Our Lady of Remedies. After the United States of America annexed the islands in 1898 as a consequence of the Spanish–American War, American urban planners envisioned the development of Malate as the newest and trendiest exclusive residential area for American families. American expatriates and some of the old Spanish mestizo families populated the district in modern high rise apartments and bungalows. Despite extensive damage after the Second World War, many homes and buildings were still standing; the displaced wealthy families who evacuated their homes during the war returned and re-built their private villas and kept the whole district residential until the 1970s.
The once exclusive residential areas in western Malate began to transform into a commercial area with some large homes and residential apartments being converted into small hotels, specialty restaurants and cafes. During the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos and performing artists found a haven in Malate and it became a bohemian enclave.. The district can be directly accessed by the main roads like the Roxas Boulevard, Quirino Avenue and Taft Avenue; the Light Rail Transit follows Taft Avenue and stops at three stations located in Malate, Vito Cruz Station, Quirino Station and Pedro Gil Station. Agencies like the Department of Finance or DOF, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas or BSP and lending institution LandBank of the Philippines established their headquarters in the district, whilst the National Naval Command Headquarters of the Philippine Navy, is at the boundary limits of Manila and the city of Pasay along Roxas Boulevard; the Bureau of Plant Industry is headquartered in the area. In the 1990s, Malate and the nearby district of Ermita had been "cleaned-up" and big businesses and resort hotels have sprouted in the district.
Harrison Plaza, Manila's first enclosed modern mall, is located in the Malate district. There is one hospital, the Ospital ng Maynila Medical Center, located at the corner of Roxas Boulevard and Quirino Avenue; the district is home to the Philippine's first sports stadium, the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex and the country's premiere zoological park, the Manila Zoological and Botanical Garden. Promenades and parks by the Manila Bay have been made more convenient and safe with the opening of the Manila Baywalk area and the renovated Plaza Rajah Sulayman. A portion of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex lies within the district; the district contains a red-light district. Education in Malate is provided by private schools. Several educational institutions which are part of the University Belt are located in Malate, these are the De La Salle University, De La Salle – College of Saint Benilde, Philippine Christian University, Philippine Women's University, St. Paul University Manila and St. Scholastica's College Manila.
Prominent secondary schools in Malate are the Jesus Reigns Christian Academy, Jose Abad Santos Memorial School and the Malate Catholic School. Doña Aurora Quezon Elementary School is the only public school in the district. Herminio A. Astorga By Sword and Fire: The Destruction of Manila in World War II, 3 February-3 March 1945 by Alphonso J. Aluit Bookmark, Inc. © 1994 National Commission for Culture and the Arts ISBN 971-569-162-5 Media related to Malate, Manila at Wikimedia Commons Malate travel guide from Wikivoyage
Santa Cruz, Manila
Santa Cruz is a district in the northern part of the City of Manila, located on the right bank of the Pasig River near its mouth, boredered by the districts of Tondo, Binondo and Sampaloc, Grace Park and La Loma. The district belongs to the 3rd congressional district of Manila in the Philippines. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors to the Philippine Islands, the district of Santa Cruz was a marshland, patches of greeneries and rice fields. A Spanish expedition in 1581 claimed the territory and awarded to the Society of Jesus whose members are known as'Jesuits'; the Jesuits built the first Roman Catholic church in the area where the present Santa Cruz Parish stands on June 20, 1619. The Jesuits enshrined the image of the Our Lady of The Pillar in 1643 to serve the pre-dominantly Chinese residents in the area; the image drew a lot of a popular cult grew around it. On June 24, 1784, King Carlos III of Spain gave the deeds to about 2 km² of land, part of the Hacienda de Mayhaligue to the San Lazaro Hospital which served as a caring home for lepers in Manila at that time.
At the Santa Cruz Parish, a small park was built that linked the area into the headquarters of the Spanish cavalry, the building that once was the Colegio de San Ildefonso, operated by the Jesuits. The district in the Spanish times had a slaughter house and a meat market and up north was the Chinese cemetery; the Franciscan fathers were given the responsibility to care for the lepers of the city and the San Lazaro Hospital. Father Felix Huerta developed San Lazaro into a refuge for the afflicted and it became a famous home for those afflicted in the north side of the Pasig River. During World War II, the Japanese occupational forces, caught unaware of the fast approaching liberation by the combined American & Filipino soldiers from the north, abandoned in 1945 the northern banks of the Pasig River including Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz and much of the northern portions of Manila were spared from the artillery bombardment and to date, a number of pre-World War II buildings and houses still stand in Santa Cruz.
When the Philippine republic was established in July 1946, the San Lazaro Hospital complex became the head office of the country’s Department of Health. The first Santa Cruz Church was built when the Arrabal of Santa Cruz was established by the Jesuits in the early 1600s; the church had undergone many repairs and reconstruction, with the last reconstruction done in the 1950s. Today, the church architecture employs a California Spanish Mission style facade silhouette with the usual Filipino Baroque ornamentation; the church facade is topped with an effigy statue of Our Lady of the Pillar, the patroness of the church whose feast happens every third Sunday of October and on the 12th day of October. Santa Cruz is home to Manila's oldest cemeteries located in the district's northern section namely, La Loma Cemetery, the Manila Chinese Cemetery, the city's biggest, the Manila North Cemetery. Rizal Avenue is the main thoroughfare in the district; the district is accessible via the following roads: Recto Avenue Tayuman Street Blumentritt RoadStations of the Manila Line 1, commencing from Baclaran and Roosevelt stations, are in Carriedo, Doroteo Jose, Bambang and Blumentritt.
The Philippine National Railways has a station in Blumentritt. Jeepneys coming from Baclaran and Caloocan pass through Rizal Avenue. Media related to Santa Cruz, Manila at Wikimedia Commons Santa Cruz, Manila travel guide from Wikivoyage
José Honorato Lozano
José Honorato Lozano was a Filipino painter born in Manila. He is best known as the pioneering practitioner of the art form known as Letras y figuras, in which the letters of a patron's name is composed by contoured arrangements of human figures surrounded by vignettes of scenes in Manila - an art form that may have derived loosely from illuminated manuscripts. Santiago Pilar, an authority on 19th-century paintings, described Lozano's works as "some of the most quaint and endlessly fascinating relics of Filipino culture in Spanish times". Lozano was the son of a lighthouse keeper at Manila Bay, he grew up in Manila outside the walled city of Intramuros. A local commentator, Rafael Diaz Arenas, remarked as early as 1850 that Lozano was "a watercolourist without rival". Lozano painted in the conventional costumbrista tradition as a means of supplying the demand for souvenirs of Manila to foreign visitors, he painted in oils and the Spanish government commissioned him to depict episodes from the history of the colony to be displayed during a fiesta in the district of Santa Cruz, Manila in 1848.
José Maria A. Cariño, author of José Honorato Lozano: Filipinas 1847, surmises that Lozano may have been trained by Chinese painters or Filipino painters skilled in Chinese painting techniques. A folio of Lozano's watercolors surfaced in a 1995 episode of Antiques Roadshow with appraiser Peter Nahum, it is not certain, whether the owner was a British family, or a Belgian family by one account. But that folio appraised by Nahum went on to sell for GBP240,000 at a auction. In September 2016, an rare set of 12 watercolors by Lozano in the possession of a Spanish marquess, was offered at auction with a starting bid of ₱5 million. Justiniano Asuncion Fabián de la Rosa Damián Domingo Juan Luna Fernando AmorsoloBoxer Codex Letras y figuras Tipos del Pais Media related to José Honorato Lozano at Wikimedia Commons
Legislative districts of Manila
The Legislative Districts of Manila are the representations of the city of Manila in the various national legislatures of the Philippines. The city is represented in the lower house of the Congress of the Philippines through its first, third, fourth and sixth districts. Manila was divided into two representative districts from 1907 to 1949; when seats for the upper house of the Philippine Legislature were elected from territory-based districts between 1916 and 1935, the city formed part of the fourth senatorial district which elected two out of the 24-member senate. In the disruption caused by the Second World War, Manila was incorporated into the City of Greater Manila on January 1, 1942 through Manuel Quezon's Executive Order No. 400 as a wartime emergency measure. Greater Manila was represented by two delegates in the National Assembly of the Japanese-sponsored Second Philippine Republic: one was the city mayor, while the other was elected through a citywide assembly of KALIBAPI members during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines.
Upon the restoration of the Philippine Commonwealth in 1945, Manila's pre-war two-district representation was retained. By virtue of the Revised Charter of the City of Manila, enacted on June 18, 1949, the city was divided into four congressional districts; the city elected four representatives from the 2nd Congress up to the 7th Congress. The city was represented in the Interim Batasang Pambansa as part of Region IV from 1978 to 1984, elected six representatives, at large, to the Regular Batasang Pambansa in 1984. Manila was reapportioned into six congressional districts under the new Constitution, proclaimed on February 11, 1987, it elected members to the restored House of Representatives starting that same year. District: Tondo Barangays: 1–146 Area: 4.57 km² Population: 415,906 Districts: Binondo, San Nicolas, Tondo District: Tondo District: Tondo Barangays: 147–267 Area: 4.08 km² Population: 215,457 Districts: Ermita, Paco, Quiapo, San Miguel, Santa Ana, Santa Cruz Districts: Binondo, San Nicolas, Santa Cruz Districts: Binondo, San Nicolas, Santa Cruz Barangays: 268–394 Area: 6.24 km² Population: 221,780 Districts: Sampaloc, San Miguel District: Sampaloc Barangays: 395–586 Area: 5.14 km² Population: 265,046 Districts: Ermita, Malate, Pandacan, Port Area, Santa Ana Districts: Ermita, Malate, Port Area, San Andres Bukid Barangays: 649–828 Area: 11.56 km² Population: 366,714 Districts: Paco, San Miguel, Santa Ana, Santa Mesa Barangays: 587–648, 829–905 Area: 7.79 km² Population: 295,245 encompasses Manila province includes Quezon City and the following municipalities from Rizal: Caloocan, Mandaluyong, Parañaque, San Juan Philippine House of Representatives Congressional Library
Silay
Silay the City of Silay, is a 3rd class city in the province of Negros Occidental, Philippines. According to the 2015 census, it has a population of 126,930 people, it is part of the metropolitan area called Metro Bacolod, which includes the cities of Bacolod and Talisay. It has a sizable commercial and fishing port and is the site of the new Bacolod-Silay International Airport, which replaced the old Bacolod City Domestic Airport. Silay is referred to as the "Paris of Negros" due to its artists, cultural shows and large collection of preserved heritage houses. More than thirty of these houses have been declared by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines as part of the Silay National Historical Landmark. In 2015, the city celebrated its 58th charter anniversary; the appellation Silay is derived from the name of a native tree. The kansilay is the city's official tree. A local legend tells of, it is said that in the days of the rajahs, there once lived a princess named Kansilay. An attack on the settlement by pirates was thwarted when the princess bravely led the people in the village's defense.
The fight was furious and the princess fought like a seasoned warrior. Murals that used to grace some of the city's public buildings depict her as a fierce fighter wielding a huge talibong, a short native single-edged sword; the pirates were at the cost of the princess' life. Her paramour arrived in time to see her die. In grief, the people lovingly buried her. To their surprise, a tree grew right over her grave, the first Kansilay tree, a final gift from the brave princess. Silay was first settled in 1565 under the name "Carobcob". In early writings, the settlement was referred to as "Calubcub", "Caracol" and "Caraco"; the last two variations mean a "spiral" in Spanish. Carobcob was built near the mouth of a creek. Carobcob was granted as an encomienda to Cristobal Nuñez Paroja, one of the seventeen soldiers of Miguel López de Legazpi on January 25, 1571. In the second half of the century, Moro slave raiders escalated their incursions on the large island, forcing the Corregidor of Negros to adopt the policy of flight rather than resistance.
People left their homes sometime in 1760 and settled in a new location between two small rivers and Panaogao. A paloisades or estacada was constructed to protect the populace from Moro raiders; the place is now known as its name derived from the Spanish word estacada. In 1760 Silay was recognized as a town being referred to in a letter from Governor Juan Jose de Mijares mentioning Silay as a leading town in the north. In 1776, the bishop of Cebu considered Silay as the center of the parish. In 1760, it became a town. By 1896, it had become a leading sugar-producing area because of the Horno Economico built in 1846 by a Frenchman who became a permanent resident of Silay, Yves Leopold Germain Gaston. With the outbreak of the Revolution of 1896 came a division between the sugarcane planters of Silay and the clergy; some planters and clergy supported the rebels. On November 5 of 1898, at about 2:00 in the afternoon, residents of Silay gathered in the street corner now known as Cinco de Noviembre Street and from there they proceeded to the Spanish garrison near the Catholic Church.
The encounter was bloodless. The Spanish civil guard commander, Lt. Maximiano Correa, refused to surrender. After negotiations with the revolutionaries mediated by Juan Viaplana, a local Spaniard, the Spanish garrison did surrender. A Philippine flag was raised for the first time at the Silay plaza that afternoon. Leandro Locsin became temporary president after the signing of the terms of surrender. Timoteo Unson and the group of Silay residents marched south to join forces with some residents of Talisay for an attack on Bacolod, the capital. On the slopes of Mt. Silay lies Patag, the site of Imperial Japan's last stand in Negros during World War II. In 1945, U. S. military forces landed in the island. The occupying forces of the Nagano Detachment of the Imperial Japanese Army retreated to Silay and proceeded up Mt. Silay to Patag. There, they established a defensive position. Military forces of the Philippine Commonwealth and soldiers of the U. S. 40th Infantry Division proceeded up the slopes of Mt. Silay with help from Filipino soldiers of the 7th, 72nd and 75th Infantry Division of the Philippine Commonwealth Army and Negrense guerrilla fighters and defeated the Japanese defenders.
Today, the site is marked by a monument dedicated to the efforts which led to the liberation of the island of Negros. Silay City had been known in the past as the "Paris of Negros" and the "cultural and intellectual hub of Negros" due to the residents' love for knowledge and works of art, its collection of heritage mansions built during the height of the Philippine sugar industry's success, of which Negros was the center. Most notable among these houses is Balay Negrense, the mansion of the son of the first Negrense sugar baron, Yves Leopold Germain Gaston and the Hofileña Ancestral House built by Manuel Severino Hofileña for his wife, former Miss Silay Gilda Ledesma Hojilla. Silay became a chartered city on June 12, 1957 by virtue of Republic Act 1621. On June 7, 2003, Silay City became the first local government unit in the Republic of the Philippines to hold a referendum through a People's Initiative ap