Up Close and Architectural: Houses that Sugar Built
/Book Review: Houses that Sugar Built: An Intimate Portrait of Philippine Ancestral Homes, By Gina Consing McAdam and Siobhán Doran (Oro editions, 2023)
Houses that Sugar Built is both social and economic history. Sugar underpinned the economies of many countries. Negros Occidental province was largely dependent on the crop, and it eventually brought ostentatious wealth to what was a backwater of prosperous colonial-era Iloilo City by the mid to the late 20th century.
There was a saying, “Sa Negros ang kwarta gina piko kag gina pala” (In Negros money is abundant, you use a pick and shovel). Then the crash came in the ‘80s, the tiempos muertos (lean months) that soon turned into years and even decades.
Sharing a back fence with the first house featured in the book -- Molo’s Yusay-Consing Mansion, recently acquired by SM Prime and now known as the Molo Mansion -- I was immediately captivated. Many of the other houses are Iloilo and Negros landmarks, and as a child, I was curious about what was inside these majestic homes of the rich, long before my middling interest in architecture or heritage started.
The Molo Mansion (Photo by © Siobhán Doran)
That most of the sugar barons in Negros were from either Jaro or Molo, often of Chinese mestizos, was another point of interest. Their way of life, homes, and expansive driveways singularly signified “Ah, hacendero (plantation owners).” Most of the large ancestral homes lining E. Lopez Street in Jaro, regarded as the first “Millionaire’s Row” in the country, were built by sugar planters but are now fading into shadows of their former selves.
Each house featured in the book also represents what the authors call “Critical Ambition,” the desire of the patrons to participate in an international architectural culture, with sugar barons embarking on a “grand tour” of western capitals and returning to their provincial environs with a penchant for the latest trends in Paris, Vienna, or the USA.
The Boat House, the Lopez ancestral home (Photo by © Siobhán Doran)
For a better understanding of the era, a memoir by Gina Consing McAdam both introduces and provides context to the heyday of the industry. “In the current complacently globalized world,” the authors observe, “it is important to note the scale and ambition that would have underpinned this cultural commitment in the early 20th century.” Indeed, social media, digital photography, and the internet has made all-so-distant places just a click away on a smartphone. A century ago, decades before air travel was ubiquitous, this access was but a dream.
The interviews with the families of the owners are gracious and intimate, evoking the feel of a mid-afternoon tete-a-tete over a cup of the thickest tsokolate tablea (native chocolate), sweetened with muscovado sugar, paired with kinihad or biscocho de caña (sugar cookies). Family lore is passed down: how the houses were built; stories of growing up under the watchful eyes of the patriarchs and matriarchs; evening rosaries; fabled travels; mischievous happenings; grand celebrations.
The Gaston Mansion (Photo by © Siobhán Doran)
The houses were often spared by the Japanese occupiers in the 1940s as offices or officers’ quarters while the owners and their families sought refuge elsewhere, some in their Negros plantations. However, many palatial homes around Molo were burned, bombed, and later demolished.
The visuals as well as the details in the text make for a fascinating architectural study – from roofs, ceilings to floors, stairways, furnishings, and basements that fuse Filipino, Spanish, and more contemporary touches, spanning neoclassic, art deco, streamline moderne, or even hodge-podge, playful “Mannerist” styles. Ornate calado room dividers, ventanillas (small windows), balustrades, capiz shell (Placuna placenta sp.) and stained glass windows abound. Described are various types of rare Philippine hardwood in diverse shades, carvings and flourishes. Lengthy but readable essays by architect-editor Ian McDonald accompany houses, such as “From Trade Winds to Transoms – An Architectural Overview of the Houses that Sugar Built.” Nina Lim-Yuson’s miniature sketches of each house adorns the title pages; there is a glossary of vernacular, Spanish, and Italian terms used.
Balay ni Tana Dicang (Photo by © Siobhán Doran)
Gina Consing McAdam explains why only certain houses are included: “The houses featured in this book were chosen on the basis of two things: kinship and friendship. Kinship because the owners were either directly or indirectly related or were my family, or else they were close and trusted friends of people without whom this book would not have happened.”
On cover of the 260-page, hardbound, 9.5 x 12-inch book is the interior of Iloilo’s Celso Ledesma home, also known as the “Eagle House.” Featured are 23 houses; 11 from Iloilo City, ten from Negros Occidental province, two from Pampanga Province. On average, each house has a nine to ten-pages, including a two-page full frontal spread. Thus, one is treated to sweeping vistas, while also being presented with intricate architectural details up close. Slightly over half of the Iloilo and Negros homes featured are open to the public. I’ve had the good fortune of being able to peek into the corners and cupboards, particularly those in Silay, Talisay, Molo, and Jaro.
Their way of life, homes, and expansive driveways singularly signified “Ah, hacendero (plantation owners).”
Gina’s partnership with Siobhán Doran, an accomplished architectural photographer (they also collaborated on a book on London’s Lanesborough Hotel), has led to prestigious awards and singular recognition. Shot entirely in natural light, except for some of the portraits of the owners and heirs interviewed, an image from the book was selected for exhibition at the 2023 Royal Academy Summer Show. Siobhán was named “Architectural Photographer of the Year” at the Prix de la Photographie Paris, and in April, she won the first prize in the Architecture and Design category in the Sony World Photography Awards in London. Only 30 were selected out of 350,000 entries, for the “Oscars” of the photography world. This is a welcome development, considering that award-winning photographs of the Philippines, or by Filipino photographers often show the “human interest” angle, such as victims of the war on drugs, volcanic explosions, natural disasters, inmates sleeping cheek-by-jowl in a basketball court inside Bilibid prison, or the poignant, tragic Joel Abong, child of sakadas (migrant sugarcane farm laborers), dying of malnutrition and TB in a Bacolod hospital.
Gina Consing McAdam and Siobhan Doran at the Yusay-Consing house in Molo (Photo courtesy of Gina Consing McAdam)
Fittingly, book was launched early this year on the grounds of the Molo Mansion, the only house featured that is no longer in family hands, but nevertheless stands out as a model of heritage conservation and adaptive re-use.
There was a sumptuous dinner befitting Iloilo as the only UNESCO Creative City for Gastronomy in the country. It was attended by most of the homeowners and heirs, celebrities, local cultural heritage workers, SM Prime bigwigs, and media lifestyle gurus. The launch featured a fashion show with local designers, a “fireside chat” with Gina and Siobhán, heritage advocate Eugene Jamerlan, homeowner Mari Flor J. Lopez-Vito, SM Supermalls President Steven T. Tan, with Ces Drilon hosting. The Molo Mansion was decked out simply, its features floodlit, and instead of floral bouquets, four huge clay planters had, freshly cut sugar cane stalks as accents.
Dr. Vicente Salas is a retired public health specialist who has worked for the UN and International NGOs in over 15 countries. He is now back in his native iloilo, after being away for 35 of the last 37 years.