Just as today’s elite build second homes in Tagaytay and Punta Fuego and as their grandparents built in Baguio in the 1920s, the super-rich of the Spanish Regime constructed theirs along the Pasig River.
The Governor General himself had a house in still bucolic San Miguel (Posesión de Malacañang). He moved there permanently in the 1870s and the wealthy followed suit. Among them was the builder of a house on Gral. Solano Street, most likely principal of Eugster Labhart y Cia., a Swiss or French trading company.
The Eugster home survived rough use as government and business office, school, night club. It escaped World War II unharmed and still stands—immaculately white with capiz windows and arcaded veranda beyond a paved courtyard and a splashing fountain. It’s not easy to impress Jullie Yap Daza, but she describes the interior thus, “Glittering chandeliers overhead, gleaming black and white marble tiles on the floor …above a sweeping staircase, a crystal chandelier hung, as big as my house.”
Then First Lady Imelda Marcos bought it in 1966 for PhP180,000.00 from the heirs of Michael Goldenberg, manufacturer of Helene Curtis beauty products who lived there from 1950 till he died in 1963. After sensitive restoration by Archt. Leandro V. Locsin, it was baptized “Ang Maharlika” (though still better known as “Goldenberg Mansion”) and became Marcos Foundation office and guest house.
Under the Marcoses, the mansion welcomed Spain’s Juan Carlos and Sofia, the U.N.’s Kurt Waldheim, Indira Gandhi, Canada’s Pierre Trudeau, and jet setters like pianist Van Cliburn, Christina Ford and Doris Duke. These days, it’s occasionally used by the President and by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs to receive important visitors.
Ang Maharlika was a treasure house containing part of the fabled Marcos art collection and Filipiniana library. Some items have been sold or transferred elsewhere, but the sala remains elegant with its wood filigree arches and chandeliers (reputedly from Versailles). Tapestries of Diana the Huntress and a della Robbia mirror once owned by Catherine de Medici look upon gilded furniture and Persian rugs. Nearby are Grandma Moses paintings, French ancient regime and Empire furniture.
In a reception room are Chinese furniture inlaid with 4,000 jade plaques and a 16th century European devotional altar with ivory figures depicting the life of St. Catherine of Alexandria. Chinese and Southeast Asian ceramics from 2000 BC to the 19th century fill the cabinets of a large room.
The Pasig River is today lined not with historic homes but with informal settlers and warehouses. Ang Maharlika and the Teus house next door (also rescued by Mrs. Marcos) are in good shape. However, on the same street is an empty Art Deco mansion with a “For Sale” sign. Upriver in Nagtahan, a state university seems not to know what to do with an enormous old house.
In Sta. Ana is Xavier House, originally an 1800s private home now owned by the Jesuits who are looking for a buyer. May enlightened hands touch Manila’s few remaining heritage structures.
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