Wala Lang
By DR. JAIME C. LAYA
To celebrate the opening of the Belgian Presidency of the European Union, H.E. Christian Meerschman organized a concert and reception at San Sebastian Church deep in Manila’s traffic-choked University Belt. The concert featured marvelous singers from Baguio’s St. Louis University and the reception was at a romantic patio with grown trees and a fountain. At the evening’s end, guests brought home delicious Belgian chocolate made in Parañaque by chocolatier Benoit Nicolay.
The evening reminded everyone of long-standing ties between the Philippines and Belgium. (King Leopold II actually tried to buy Las Islas Filipinas from Spain in the 1870s.)
CICM Fathers and ICM Sisters, Belgian missionaries, arrived in 1907 and 1910 respectively. They founded St. Louis University and St. Theresa’s College and along the way introduced Belgian specialties like lace-making in Tagudin, Ilocos Sur, the sisters’ first posting.
Believe it or not, the neo-gothic San Sebastian Church is all Belgian steel, inside and out. A national historical landmark, it’s a pretty sight at the end of R. Hidalgo Street. The exterior is painted a restful green, while the interior’s pillars and vaulting are painted to look like stone, with trompe-l’œil (“fool-the-eye”) retablos and santos on walls. Above the main altar is the venerated image of Nstra. Sra. del Carmen (brought from Mexico in 1618).
Completed in 1891, San Sebastian is a multinational project.
• Spaniard Genaro Palacios, designer and project catalyst, devoted years designing the structure and coordinating all concerned. (Credit has been given, incidentally, to Gustave Eiffel of Paris’ tower fame, but no hard evidence supports the attribution.)
• Belgians produced the steel. Cast, rolled and cut to exact measure, nine ships brought 1,500 tons of steel to Manila.
• A French contractor laid the foundations and Frederick Henry Sawyer, a Brit, directed the imported steel’s reassembly into the church we now admire.
• Germans made the stained glass windows.
• Filipino artists — painters Lorenzo Rocha and Felix Martinez and sculptor Isabelo Tampingco — enriched the interior.
• Belgians produced the steel. Cast, rolled and cut to exact measure, nine ships brought 1,500 tons of steel to Manila.
• A French contractor laid the foundations and Frederick Henry Sawyer, a Brit, directed the imported steel’s reassembly into the church we now admire.
• Germans made the stained glass windows.
• Filipino artists — painters Lorenzo Rocha and Felix Martinez and sculptor Isabelo Tampingco — enriched the interior.
Filipinos traditionally built with bamboo and nipa, resistant to earthquake and cheaply replaced after each typhoon, fire or termite attack. The Spanish used stone, tile and hardwood that defied all calamities except earthquake.
Unfortunately, several high-intensity earthquakes shook Manila starting in 1863. The Governor-General’s Palace, the Cathedral and other churches, the Ayuntamiento, private homes, all crumbled.
San Sebastian Church had already been built and rebuilt several times before and the Augustinian Recollects decided on a steel church that could survive anything.
Except rust that is, explains Tina Paterno, architectural heritage conservator and church restoration project director. Some 36 kilos of metal have already fallen and something has to be done soon.
Rust has been eating the steel, causing wall paintings to flake off and creating holes in the metal walls.
The church is on the World Monuments Fund watch list and the Recollects are sounding the alarm.
The NCCA has allotted money to analyze the problem, expertise has been promised by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and New York’s Statue of Liberty’s Restoration Adviser, but everyone needs to help.
Comments are cordially invited, addressed to walalang@mb.com.ph.
Published in Manila Bulletin August 1, 201
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