Above: One of the side altar retablos of the church.

I found some photos of the main and side altar retablos of the Recollect church in Cebu City which was demolished in 1965 to pave way for the expansion of the Colegio de San Jose-Recoletos, now a university. Credit goes to “rlr224,” an OAR friar who posted these photos in Flickr.

Anyway, I was really dismayed at the thought of this church being demolished just to pave way for the construction of an expansion building of a growing school. The school itself was the site of the Recollect monastery which was also demolished earlier to give way to the former.

I’m not against the expansion of schools but during those times, the friars were rich enough to buy large tracks of land where they could have built the new campus. The church was an important cultural heritage structure too and since the friars were running a school then they shouldn’t have just demolished it since after all it could have become an important educational landmark for the students.

Today, such beauty in art can only be appreciated in books and in some framed photos found at the school. A really unfounded endeavor isn’t it? I read that there was a deliberation among the conservatives and the modernists but the latter won.

The main altar retablo is now at the San Agustin Museum in San Agustin Church, Intramuros, Manila. I wonder who got the four side altar retablos? A wealthy financier/sponsor perhaps who took part in the demolition of the stone church? I heard that one of it is now in the collection of a “rich family” who lives in Forbes Park.