The Escolta main street in Manila

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Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal

Title: The Escolta main street in Manila
Language: English
Source: The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume 8 (Issue No. 6) June 1928
Year: 1928
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Fulltext: June, 1928 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 5 and the director’s chair in the Philippine Nation al Bank, with which Cotterman pdre has been associated since 1922. He resigned and was off the board for a while, but was reelected in 1925 and has been vice president of the bank and member of the executive committee since 1927 and until his departure for America a few weeks ago for a visit, when he resigned. He was also president of the Binalbagan Estate, Inc., operating its own property, the big sugar central at Binalbagan, Occidental Negros. Cotterman believes in paying out and paying up, and as an executive official of the bank this has guided him in shaping the policy respecting the sugar centrals financed by the bank, of which Binalbagan is one. He has been closely identified with the most constructive single enterprise in the islands, the rehabilitation of the Philippine National Bank and the salvaging of the sugar companies and planters’ estates financed by it—all with a most favorable effect upon the bank and the sugar industry, as well as upon other local banks and Philippine industries as a whole. In 1915, Cot terman bought his beautiful home on Figueras avenue, Pasay. Here he is up betimes every morning, busy at the lawn, seeing about the poultry—something frugal, worthwhile, con structive. The community learned his worth long ago, and governors general relied upon it, particularly upon his executive judgment, always quickly reached, but not without deep meditation, and always sound. When the Cebu Portland Cement Company was getting under way and had the task of installing its plant and commencing operations, Cotterman was one of its directors, 1921-22. The result was a new industry of the first importance. Leo Cotterman is following his father’s foot steps in the banking business; young as he is, he has his father’s steady temperament and for years has been a director of the Philippine Trust Company. Cotterman pfcre is sought The Escolta: Main Street in Manila By Percy A. Hill The Escolta is Manila’s Main street, and has been for more than 100 years, or since the city was opened to foreign commerce and foreigners were permitted to reside in it and engage in merchandising. It is one of the most crowded thoroughfares in the orient and quite rapidly assuming a modern appearance. Though there are still types enough of the oldtime building, two stories, the upper overshooting the lower in true Spanish colonial style, modern business structures now prevail, rising from three to five full stories and boasting plate-glass fronts and the convenience of elevators. Mossy tile roofs sagging even the massive hardwood timbering which supports them are yielding the day to galvanized iron sheets which are less dangerous in earthquakes, cheaper, and infinitely uglier. Of course the more ambitious buildings are roofed with tile or smeared over with sheets of concrete, but it makes little difference how they may be roofed, they are too high for their lids by everyone, consulting him about everything and relying on his judgment, often his active aid. If oqe can’t see him at his office, one makes bold to call at his home. He thought to make himself less accessible when the store was moved to the Masonic Temple building (another project he had much to do with, this fine office and store structure), and he put his desk in an obscure corner at the top of a narrow stairway. It was no use, he had to come down again and sit behind the easily swinging office doors. Men would seek him out, and he found that he didn’t wish it otherwise, whatever the extra burden might be. He of course was active in the organization of the chamber of commerce, where he has always been on the directorate, either as vice president or president. He is now a vice pres ident. He has represented the chamber in Washington, and stood sponsor for Philippine business on travels throughout the United States totalling four trips across the continent. As this has been published before, it will not be enlarged on.here; let it suffice that no man has worked harder for the islands or to greater purpose than has Cotterman. This year too, as always when he’ is in America, he will be upon the service of their majesties, the public of these islands; for he will be working and speaking in behalf of their business and welfare. A final word, with malice toward none. It has been America’s, practice to choose governors general outside the Philippines. The practice is well established, the Journal does not quarrel with it, save that the impression should not be gained in the United States that men worthy and capable of filling the insular executiveship are not to be found in the islands. The practice may be a good one, but if it were abandoned, then it could be said that Charles Mason Cot terman, among others, is a man fully competent and equally qualified to be the governor general of these islands, the territory he has chosen to make his home.—W. R. to be seen. Yet they are not really high. The skyscraper will probably never find lodgment on the Escolta, destined no doubt to remain a Main street unique to Manila. It will always be just four rambling blocks long, always with Plaza Santa Cruz on the east and Plaza Moraga on the west, and always winding with the lazy curve of the Pasig. Plaza Moraga. Why? It was Father Moraga who prevailed upon Carlos III not to abandon the Philippines, and Moraga was killed 308 years ago in a battle with the Dutch off Mariveles. As to Plaza Santa Cruz, the Journal has said before that here the British formally returned the Philippines to Spain, 1764, Don Simon de Anda acting for Spain, as his effigy and the in scription on the wall of the church facing the Escolta attest. It is a curious street, curiously named. La Escolta, the Escort. Alkan Building, Escolta: Fourth Story Added Since Picture Was Taken For a long time after the walled city was built and the governor’s palace was put straight across the street from that of the Archbishop, many of the royal governors preferred to live in the stone convento attached to the parish church of Santa Cruz, built by the Jesuits as a mission to the Chinese of the district. The governors enjoyed the cool breezes coming in across the swamps now converted into the beautiful and spacious Mehan Gardens and the late lamented Bagumbayan drive, widened, asphalted and recently rechristened calle Padre Burgos. Thus in commemorating new history, the city fathers have resort to the simple device of erasing the old memorials and writing new legends over them, to the lesser honor of the men they would remember and to no great public advantage. Aside from the comfort of the Santa Cruz convento, the royal governors sometimes found it an advantage to be living at that distance from the Archbishop, with whose authority over dis puted matters they were often in conflict; and per haps the prelates, right at least part of the time, had, by the arrangement, more real elbow room. Every royal governor had his personal escort, a company of halberdiers, alabarderos, never exceeding eighty men, some twenty of whom were mounted. For the most part they were veteran soldiers; and each man carried a halberd as a part of his military equipment, the halberd being a medieval battle-axe mounted on a seven-foot staff. These particular halberds had burnished brass trimmings; they flashed with imposing effect in Manila’s sunlight. A strong bamboo bridge crossed the Pasig at about the place the old Bridge of Spain used to stand. The Chinese who built the bamboo bridge were absolved for a stipulated period from taxes, so they had reason to build it well. The religious and military center of the city was the walled city, as it is today. Business was divided between Binondo on the north side of the Pasig, still the wholesale center, and the Parian, or Chinese quarter north of the river on a site now partly absorbed by the postoffice property and Plaza Lawton, partly by the ice-plant, and partly by Mehan Gardens and the network of streets traversing this section of town. Retail Importers •ttle American Dr„ ® C BOTICA B01E ° Wholesale Agents MANILA Heavy Chemicals—Fertilizer —Manufacturers We have been selling drugs for 97 years IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL 6 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL June, 1928 The gates of the walled city were closed at sunset, when curfew rang from the towers of all its churches; they were not opened again until dawn. Low, massive, stone-arched, typically medieval as one sees them today, these gates were all furnished out with ponderous drawbridges lowered and raised by rude capstans, with strong porcullises of square iron bars which settled into place as the drawbridges rose upright. On either side of the gates were casemates and alcoves, the latter serving as shelters for the guards and the former for prisoners arrested for petty misdemeanors. The villages of Tondo and Binondo were separated from each other and from the Pasig by clumps of bamboo and a series of grassy swamps or shallow lagoons, while along the river a sandy path connected the northern bridgehead with the Santa Cruz convento. In the clumps of native dwellings round about, all on stilts of bamboo as if prepared to wade for it in event of an unusual tide, there lingered for a long time the vestiges of the cult of Islam. They lingered under the bells of the new churches, they lingered despite the persistent teachings of the friars; and many irreconcilables lurked in the hills of Montalban, carrying on the age-old trade of tulisanes and mandu-dukots, thieves and kidnappers. Toward evening, therefore, the narrow path from the convento to the bridgehead was crowd ed with fearful pedestrians hurrying to get inside the walled citadel before the closing of the gates at vespers. In those old times there existed, where the De la Rama building now stands, a posada, or inn, frequented by soldiers of fortune, new arrivals, hangers-on, and a general nondescript clientele given to inordinate boasting and the imbibing of the wines of sunny Spain. With more freedom than was permitted in the walled city, the rattle of the dice box was heard; very naturally, all types of Spaniards foregathered at the inn, but especially the pioneer and the swash buckler. The Spaniard has a varied and hand some character; he has inherited the adventur ous blood of the Cathaginian, the courage of the Moor, and the persevering valor of the Goth, to say nothing of his Iberian ancestry. One of the habitues of the posada, at a certain period of which we write, was a boisterous soldier with a peculiar squint which marked him per manently. A native of Aragon, he had seen military service with the Flemings and Holland ers and had become tainted with the heretical teachings of those low countries. A plausible and smooth-tongued talker, he would often, when in his cups, voice his opinions in a manner to horrify the bystanders; for while military men generally pay little enough attention to the reli gious beliefs of their comrades, the devout Spaniard is an exception to this rule. Besides, the fellow was cross-eyed, which, taken with his sardonic squint and his cynical dissertations soon caused him to be shunned as a companion. The superstition of the evil eye was upon him. Men began repeating the old Tagalog aphorism, sa sampong duling, ni isang magaling, in ten cross-eyed men, not one is any good. The heresy was soon reported to the Familiar Perez-Samanillo Building, Escolta, Manila of the Holy Inquisition, but the garrulous one paid no attention to repeated warnings. One evening he left the posada almost at the curfew hour, intending to visit some acquaintances in the walled city, and set out along the sandy path to the bridge. He was never heard of again; he had utterly disappeared.- A few Indios had disappeared along this path from time to time, but no Spaniard had ever been molested, and the colony was soon quite worked up over the myste rious incident. Feat of similar occurrences in future at last drove a citizens’ delegation to wait upon the royal governor, with a request that he station a detachment of the alabarderos along the path as a guard until after the city gates were closed. The governor assented, detailing a grizzled officer to arrange the escort, the es colta, in such a manner as to protect the path for a period of six months; and from this the winding path by the riverside got its name, la escolta, the escort, long before it was widen ed to the dignity of a street. What became of- the heretic? Surviving Flanders, did he perish ignominiously when put to the question in Manila? The friars said they suspected Satan, that the Evil One had bodily carried the man off; and it seems only natural that they would maintain this. The Indios blamed it on the mandu-dukots. If the higher secular authorities knew anything about it, they at least kept their own counsel, and no account ever appeared in the Gazeta Oficial. Royal governors came and went, and still there were halberdiers on the Escolta. They had their stables and barracks on calle Soda, abutting the river, where they kept His Excellency’s carriage. When summoned, they were off posthaste, coach-and-four and footmen and outriders, down the Escolta and out through the country to Malacanang, and back along the Escolta and over the bridge—not the old sway ing bamboo one the Chinese built, but a better one, and at last the handsome Puente de Espafia itself—and hurriedly and officiously rumbling into the walled city and pulling up at the Ayuntamiento in the grandest manner of the road, for there His Excellency would do his day’s work and preside over the Audiencia, royal council and supreme court rolled into one grandiloquent Spanish colonial institution. On these excursions on His Majesty’s service there was a great clanging of stirrup and harness, a flashing of burnished halberds and a shouting of menials exalted to momentary importance: Make way! Make way! But now times have changed. Governors seldom visit the Escolta, halberdiers only appear there in the movies. But the people throng there daily, buying finery for their ordinary use that would have been the envy of royalty itself in the days when the heretic held forth unwisely and the Escolta was a foot patch instead of a street of merchants’ windows and glittering lights, streams of motors and traffic policemen. AN ENCOUNTER WITH A PYTHON By James M. French* One day I was riding over the cattle pastures as usual when I came upon a number of cows and calves which had evidently got separated from the main herd. Taking some salt from the saddle bags I scattered it on the ground and called out, “Asin, asin! Salt, salt!’’ They came crowding up, and I could observe them better; that is, all the cows but one came. But one old cow refused to move from where she stood, about 200 yards from me, and was apparently indiffer ent to the fact that I was salting her companions. In fact, I could see that her attention was riveted elsewhere. I then urged my pony closer to her, to find out what could be keeping her away from the salt. Anything that keeps one of our cows from coming on the run for salt is worth investigating. As I drew closer I recognized her as a cow that had calved about a month since; and it was no remarkable feat of memory, as some may think, to pick the cow out of a herd of several hundred, for I am among the cattle practically all the time, and this cow is one of the pets of the herd. I rode up alongside her and looked in the direction she was looking. What a sight met my eyes! Two meters away, a python lay coiled around the month-old calf, which it had crushed to death and was in the act of swallow ing. It had already swallowed the head and neck, and was on the shoulders when I came up. It did not see me at first, apparently, and I rode up still closer in order to get a better look. Then it saw me, quickly uncoiled itself from the calf’s body, disgorging at the same time, and crawled away to shelter in a nearby clump of jungle— trees and bushes—all in a matter of seconds. I was stupefied, not knowing what to do. That day I had not taken along the shotgun, as I generally do. Of late I have developed a hatred of packing it with me on the saddle, it is so unhandy to carry when one is riding over rough country. And I have no pistol as yet, *Jatnes M. French is the son of an American cattle man, J. P. French, of Passi, Iloilo, and this is one of his experiences. Do other lads in the provinces have hairraising experiences like this? The Journal would like to have accounts of them.—ED. For those who do not speculate in quality of motor lubricants and fuel SDCtJNY MOTOR OILS AND GASOLINE At Service Stations and dealers on all motor roads Standard Oil Company of New York IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL