Walk past the narrow streets of downtown Cebu City and chances are you might bump into someone who gives a walking tour of Cebu history. It’s even a bit surprising that this guy did not grow up in Cebu nor did he acquire his degree from a local institution enough to get a full grasp of local heritage and yet he’s one of the most conversant when it comes to touring guests.

Balbino Guerrero, also known to his contemporaries as Ka Bino, is a local tour guide who gives a very comprehensive walking tour of Cebu history. Starting at the Magellan’s Cross, his tour progresses to the Basilica Minore del Sto. Niño and onwards to the Cebu Cathedral until reaching the terminus of Colon Street and ending up in Parian, the old Filipino-Chinese district. Along the way he makes some stopovers to explain the significance of a particular spot — or to tell a story about it. And he doesn’t just end up explaining in monotone, he makes comical discussions with his audience perhaps just to make one’s day better or the mood cooler.

Ka Bino connects with his audience through his facial expressions.

Ka Bino hails from Tanjay, Negros Oriental. He finished his secondary education degree majoring in history at Silliman University in Dumaguete. His knack for tour guiding was unexpected, it came only after he was invited to join a tour by one of his listeners in his nightly radio show who happened to be a tour guide. The rest then, as they say, was history.

As for his knowledge about Cebu’s colorful past, he frequently visits the Cebuano Studies Center at the University of San Carlos and attends lectures and paper presentations. He also makes constant contact with some luminaries in Cebu history such as Dr. Mike Cullinane, Dr. Resil Mojares, and Prof. Jobers Bersales. Furthermore, he augments his endeavors with ideas and information that he finds in online discussion forums and blogs.

Ka Bino is a storyteller. You’ll surely find his stories about Cebu interesting. You may follow him at Twitter or befriend him at Facebook. If you’d like to set a tour appointment contact him at +63919385853. You’ll be lucky if he dons a costume.

Not just a tour guide but a storyteller.

There’s an ongoing exhibit of artworks rendered by the late Msgr. Virgilio Yap at the Cathedral Museum of Cebu. The various display of masterpieces pay tribute to a great artist and priest who died of leukemia at exactly 15 years ago. The exhibit Retrospective, A Collection of Artworks features a collection of abstract works of art including some news and magazine clippings about the artist during his lifetime. Some of his achievements are also highlighted like his unusual rendering of the crucified Christ at the altar of the Gethsemane Parish in Mandaue City, Cebu and his founding of an ecclesiastical museum which is now the Cathedral Museum of Cebu.

The Cathedral Museum of Cebu is located beside the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral and is open from Tuesday to Sunday, 9 AM to 12 NN and 1 PM to 5 PM.

The collection of artworks rendered by Msgr. Yap.

A display of the artist’s paintbrushes and a posthumous award contained in a marble box.

A group of Cebuano artists during the exhibit.

CEBU CITY (August 8, 2010 5:30 PM) — Museo Sugbo opened two new galleries just this afternoon — one featuring the colorful history of Cebu media and the other one, an art gallery. The National Museum also unveiled two traveling exhibitions featuring Philippine flora (photo above) and a photo gallery of bridges in the Philippines built during the Spanish colonial-era. The museum’s souvenir and coffee shops were also opened during the event.

The media gallery is a bit interesting. The items being exhibited include huge machines that were used to print newspapers in the past. Also on display are various old newspapers, various types of antique 35mm film cameras, and other paraphernalia used by the media. A linotype machine is also being displayed at the lobby of the museum.

If you want to relax after visiting all the galleries in the museum, you can head on to the coffee shop located at the area that used to be an isolation cell. The coffee shop is operated by Coffee Dream. Located beside it is the souvenir store, another former isolation cell, where you can buy some interesting items at affordable prices.

Museo Sugbo is located at M.J. Cuenco Avenue and is open from Monday to Saturday, 9 AM to 6 PM. Entrance fee is P30 for adults and P10 for students and those below 18 years old. Entrance fee for foreigners is P75.

A signage pointing to a specific gallery.

A corridor leading to the Cebu Media Gallery.

A linotype typesetting machine on display at the foyer of the museum.

Another corridor that leads to the art gallery.

Guests checking out some items at the gift shop.

The gift shop, a former isolation cell.

The museum, a former prison facility built in 1871.

Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama’s call for the rehabilitation of the entire stretch of Osmeña Boulevard reminds us of an earlier movement that shaped some of the cities of the USA and became one of the tools that the Americans used in manifesting her power as a colonial ruler to the Philippines.

The City Beautiful Movement shaped Chicago and so did its influence in the cities of Manila, Cebu, Baguio and Zamboanga. In Cebu City for example, Willam E. Parsons was tasked to draw up a plan for the development of a new city center away from the old Spanish-era center which we now loosely refer today as downtown.

Fuente Osmeña, a roundabout park with a fountain at the very middle.

The plan called for a grand boulevard cutting through the middle with the new capitol building at its very end. Branching in a spider-web like fashion from this boulevard would have been several roads and avenues. The Parsons Plan did not fully materialize and though only a speck of it was realized in a slightly modified version it is still noteworthy that the grand boulevard was the one that was given much attention.

The boulevard was to become the epicentre of a new urban core. At its terminus amidst a backdrop of mountains is the sprawling Capitol, the new face of power unlike during the Spanish times where the church was easily the biggest and the tallest of any other man-made structure. Several other American-era edifices would later rise along the boulevard such as the neo-classical Rizal Memorial Library & Museum, the then Southern Islands Hospital Building (now a quarters for nurses of the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center), the Cebu Normal School (now a university) and the Matilda Bradford Memorial Church. Several other edifices might have been built and the planned interiors roads and avenues might have been finished if not for World War II which overtook such endeavours.

Osmeña Boulevard with the Cebu Provincial Capitol at the very end.

The city did recover after the war but took another direction. Or the right description for this would be that the city took many different directions. The master plan crafted during the American-era seems to have been set aside; forgotten in oblivion through the years as politicians with different ideas come and go.

This is the fourth of several posts that will feature Richard E. Ahlborn’s photographs of historical churches in Cebu.

Photo courtesy of The Latin American Library, Tulane University, Richard E. Ahlborn Collection. Published in this blog in agreement with The Latin American Library. All photos in this post may not be used without first obtaining the written permission of The Latin American Library.

Bishop Sebastian de Foronda (1723-1728) once described the Cebu Cathedral as nothing but a barn overrun by plants and grasses. He may have been right after all since the cathedral looked nothing more than an oversized warehouse if not for the belfry and the facade which gave it the distinct look of a church. Vintage photos show it with plants growing at certain parts of the structure aside from the roofing that badly needed repair and the broken windows that had to be replaced. It was not until the 1930s when the cathedral was improved for it to be worthy of the status as the seat of the diocese that gave birth to Christianity in the Far East.

When Cebu was elevated into an archdiocese, the cathedral was rehabilitated for the first time. The facade was improved with both sides expanded to create a balance with the huge belfry. The interiors however suffered a major blow when the old retablo was torn down to give way to a very simple altar. The trompe d’oeil paintings at the walls and in the ceiling were also removed. The over-all result gave the interior an impression that it was a Protestant Church. Perhaps an American influence?

During the USAFFE bombings, the cathedral suffered a direct hit with only the walls and the belfry left standing. The cathedral was eventually restored after the war (photo above) and from that time on the cathedral underwent several more renovations on different occassions. The most recent renovation was sometime between 2008-2009 when the archdiocese was preparing for its 75th anniversary celebration.

Below: The facade of the cathedral prior to the renovation in the mid-1990s. (Courtesy of The Latin American Library, Tulane University, Richard E. Ahlborn Collection)

This is the third of several posts that will feature Richard E. Ahlborn’s photographs of historical churches in Cebu.

Photo courtesy of The Latin American Library, Tulane University, Richard E. Ahlborn Collection. All photos in this post may not be used without first obtaining the written permission of The Latin American Library.

Pardo’s Sto. Tomás de Villanueva Church also had a slightly different and unusual interior as what it is now. Basing on Richard E. Alhborn’s photo of it, there used to be a balcony on each of the four portions of the crossing. The balconies were supported from the floor by columns. I’m not sure what these balconies were really for but it could have just simply functioned as tribunas.

A tribuna, according to Simbahan author Regalado Trota Jose, is a balcony or gallery screened with latticework from which some members of the clergy can participate in mass without being seen. It’s like some measure of privacy to separate them from the rest of the congregation. This is still being practiced today however. For example, the Carmelite and the Pink sisters here in Cebu are separated from the laity during mass. The Carmelites are totally hidden from public view while the Pink sisters are just separated from ordinary people by an iron grille.

Richard Ahlborn took the photos in the 1960s. The balconies now no longer exist. It may have been torn down, again post-Vatican II, perhaps to make the church look “bigger” or perhaps to make it conform with the council which actually has nothing to do with such destructive renovations.

Below: Stairway to the balcony at the epistle side. (Courtesy of The Latin American Library, Tulane University, Richard E. Ahlborn Collection)

Below: The facade of the church. (Courtesy of The Latin American Library, Tulane University, Richard E. Ahlborn Collection)

This is the second of several posts that will feature Richard E. Ahlborn’s photographs of historical churches in Cebu.

Photo courtesy of The Latin American Library, Tulane University, Richard E. Ahlborn Collection. All photos in this post may not be used without first obtaining the written permission of The Latin American Library.

The church of the Nuestra Señora Virgen dela Regla would have been a marvelous sight to behold had it not been literally bulldozed upon the instance of a Dutch missionary in the early 1960s. Unique among all other churches in Cebu, the main facade featured several blind niches in the first and second levels. In the middle at the second level, a niche contained a wooden relief of the Virgin Mary which, fortunately, was saved and now forever rests at the University of San Carlos Museum.

The belfry was attached to the facade similar to the Basilica Minore del Sto. Niño. It had a somewhat trefoil pediment like the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral. The rectory was connected to the main body of the church through a roofed passageway.

What made the church even more unique was the exterior of the apse end which was like a facade in itself. Decorated with paired pilasters with Corinthian capitals plus a niche at the middle of the second level which contained another wooden relief of the Virgin Mary, it faced the Western coast of Mactan looking towards mainland Cebu. There were even three entrances at the first level but deliberately covered. Could this have been the original facade of the church?

Most churches in Cebu, except that of Liloan and this one, faced the coast irregardles of their Cardinal orientation. Could this church have originally faced the coast only to be reoriented later on? Well we can never tell. If only those responsible for its demolition did not wrongly interpret Vatican II. A friend told me that the Dutch missionary was strucked by his conscience and later regretted his decision because the bulldozer bogged down several times perhaps due to the weight and size of the hewn stones that made up the church.

A concrete church with a somewhat neo-art deco style facade now stands in its place.

Below: The apse end of the church. (Courtesy of The Latin American Library, Tulane University, Richard E. Ahlborn Collection)

This is the first of several posts that will feature Richard E. Ahlborn’s photographs of historical churches in Cebu.

Photo courtesy of The Latin American Library, Tulane University, Richard E. Ahlborn Collection. The photo may not be used without first obtaining the written permission of The Latin American Library.

The Sto. Niño Church, now the Basilica Minore del Sto. Niño in Cebu City, once had a very different interior as what most people are used to seeing now. The crossing had four huge arches, a very Romanesque feature. Side altar retables or retablos were to be found at each transept. A pulpit with finely carved details was attached to the epistle side of the nave near the crossing while a pipe organ was found at the gospel side near the choir loft.

The interiors were modified in preparation for the elevation of the church into a minor basilica during the 400th anniversary celebration of the Christianization of the Philippines in 1965. The four arches were removed including the pulpit and the pipe organ which dated back to the Spanish colonial era. The church was said to be built “earthquake proof” when Fr. Juan de Albarran started its construction in 1735 using hewn stones. No one knows though if the arches played a role in the church’s sturdy structure since it could have just been made of wood like the arches at the crossing of some churches down south of Cebu like Boljoon, Argao and Dalaguete. No problem with that but if the arches were made of stone then by all means those responsible for removing it are putting the church’s structure at risk.

It has been 45 years yet past the last major renovation. I’m just hoping that this historical church will live for another 400 years or more.

]]> http://cebuheritage.com/2010/06/22/ahlborn-photos-sto-nino-church-interior/feed/ 0 http://cebuheritage.com/2010/06/22/the-heritage-of-cebu-to-feature-ahlborn-photos/ http://cebuheritage.com/2010/06/22/the-heritage-of-cebu-to-feature-ahlborn-photos/#comments Tue, 22 Jun 2010 06:50:02 +0000 Emperor Karl http://cebuheritage.com/?p=1415 The Heritage of Cebu has inked a publication agreement with The Latin American Library of Tulane University to feature Richard E. Ahlborn’s photographs of historical churches in Cebu. Ahlborn came to the Philippines in 1965 to conduct a photographic survey of Filipino-Hispanic architecture and art in the Philippines.

The photographs are rare inasmuch as it features certain portions of existing historical churches in Cebu in its most original form. Post-Vatican II, a number of Spanish colonial churches in Cebu and elsewhere in the Philippines underwent a flurry of “ill-advised” renovations and expansions. The modifications sometimes depended on the taste of the parish priest who is assigned to a particular church. Some photographs also feature valuable church furnishings that are already gone since it have either been sold (sometimes at the instance of the parish priest), stolen or destroyed.

This series will start off today and will run for several weeks.

Unknown to the newer generation, Cebu used to have a railway system that stretched from as far as Argao down south all the way to Danao up north. The central station and the depot were located in Cebu City somewhere at the area now occupied by the Cebu South Bus Terminal and the CITOM-LTO compound. The railway system ceased to function after World War II. Buses then were beginning to gain popularity among the locals. According to a historian, some of the railroad tracks were eventually sold by the government to sugar milling companies.

Below: A station in Carcar. Note the roofing made of wooden planks.

Below: The pier of what used to be a railway bridge at the border of Carcar and San Fernando.

The Hon. Ambeth R. Ocampo, National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) chairman, will unveil and turn-over four heritage house markers to the owners of Carcar Spanish colonial ancestral houses dating from the mid-19th century that belong to the descendants of the Sarmiento-Osmeña family, the Noel family, the Mercado-Lucero family and the Silva family.

The four houses are the first Carcar ancestral houses to have heritage house makers installed on their front facades while they are also the first privately-owned houses in south Cebu province recognized as national historical landmarks protected by law by the NHCP.

The houses are significant for their architectural details, cultural influences and heirloom furnishings while many historical events and visits by historical personalities took place in each house. Leading members of each family were also town leaders who made lasting contributions to Carcar and Cebu province’s cultural, commercial, political and religious life.

Carcar has the largest number of built heritage structures in Cebu province with many of its Spanish and American period ancestral houses and public and religious landmarks concentrated on its hilltop plaza and its old town center.

The majority of its heritage structures were built during Carcar’s “Golden Age” from the American colonial and Philippine Commonwealth periods. During this time, before the outbreak of the Second World War in Cebu, Carcar became the “cradle of Cebuano culture” as architecture, art, music, literature and theater flourished and shaped Cebuano cultural identity.

(Press release by Jerry Martin Noel Alfafara)

Above: The historical marker beside the main entrance of the Arthur Dingman Building. (Photo by Mark Andrew Jorolan)

CEBU CITY (May 22, 2010) — A National Historical Marker from the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (formerly National Historical Institute) was installed at the University of San Carlos and inaugurated on May 21, 2010 with the university officials and some members of the commission in attendance.

The marker, installed right beside the main entrance of the Arthur Dingman Building, contains a brief history of the university starting from its humble beginnings as a seminary-college established at the site of the former Colegio San Ildefonso of the Jesuits.