Edificio

Among the less celebrated landmarks of Zamboanga is this piece of colonial architecture tucked on the corner of Ma. Clara St. and N.S. Valderossa St. in front of the City Hall. It’s a combination concrete and wood-frame building circa 1928, with a turret, ironwork lattice windows and an unusual cone-shaped roof. While beautiful in design, it looks like it has seen better days and badly in need of upkeep.

While hardly being promoted as a tourist attraction or catching the remotest interest of many local residents, it seems to have taken the fancy of domestic and foreign tourists to the city. I’ve seen its photos land in blogs and magazines featuring Zamboanga, and I surmise in many a traveler’s personal scrapbook and album too.

For years, it housed a popular local furniture store. That’s as far as I can remember. While today, an inconspicuous travel ticketing booth occupies its once massive doorway. Its history is unknown to me but I’d love to hear how and why it was built and who lived there in times gone by. In a couple of decades, this quaint old dame that silently stood watch over the city for ages will turn a century old.

Undeniably it is old and unique, but there is always a tinge of mystery clutching beneath the charming veneer of old buildings like this that so attracts the time traveler in a strange and interesting way. Travelers are looking for stories in the fabric of time as much as they are exploring for sites. It is sites like this that enhance the character of a destination.

This building is one of the few surviving old edifices in the town proper. I hope it will not suffer the same fate of so many over the years that have gone to rubble to give way to new or modern ones. Can’t we not just build new structures outside the old city proper?  

Property owners and the populace should recognize the historical value of old buildings. Without them people will tend to forget the past. They are non-renewable cultural resources and with every unthinking demolition, a living part of history is destroyed. 

Rather than resort to demolition, these buildings should be protected, restored, developed and maintained. Rather than be viewed as worthless derelicts, they should be seen as precious assets of special value to experience and understand, and from which great cultural and economic benefits can be derived. Let us reclaim history and reverse this trend of neglect. Let us save the last of our heritage buildings.