The House: A Cultural Perspective

Old structures and houses relate a story. Their make and design could tell much about the way of life of the people who lived in them and paint the Filipinos’ cultural transformation. They could also show their original owners’ social status — their wealth, influence and power. The ancestral house of Jose Rizal in Calamba, Laguna, for example, tells much about the national hero; that members of his family were wealthy farmers and traders.

In almost every town in the country, there is an old house which was once the town’s center of social and political activity. In those houses lived trendsetters, leaders and revolutionary thinkers. In past struggles, they blazed the trail with their heroic deeds.

Shortly thereafter, their houses were honored, saluted and revered, for heroes were born and lived in them. Through time however, the heirs and relatives of the former owners abandon the houses. Town leaders and the community ignore them. Private ownership and the menu for caring heritage houses do not seem to fuse beautifully.

Although well maintained, the Rizal house in Laguna in recent past became controversial when it was painted neon green all-over by the National Historical Institute (NHI) because the NHI said that the color green has something to do with the family surname of the national hero. In the same tone, up far north, the ancestral home of Don Isabelo Abaya, hero of Ilocos from Candon, Ilocos Sur who befriended the Bagani Tribe and trained them as warriors in the Filipino struggle for freedom, had been in a state of neglect and disrepair. Whether these houses are painted inappropriately or neglected and left at the mercy of termites and harmful elements, it shows that we do not cherish the value and importance of these ancestral homes.

Worse still, these houses are dissected. Buy-and-sell businessmen are only for profit and do not value the house’s stories and histories; they only salvage the valuable parts of these for cash. These parts are sometimes sold as second-hand lumber and second-hand house parts. People who recognize the durability and beauty of old construction materials scout house parts in these places, that is why it is no wonder that a house with so much history and heritage could have window jambs in the Visayan Region and its door panels in North Luzon.

The sad possibility that many old houses might end up like this gave Mr. Acuzar the brilliant idea of transporting old houses to his sprawling seaside land. He does not buy house parts but buys them whole and re-erects them in his compound in order to preserve them.

Among the old houses re-erected in the Acuzar Compound so far include the Candaba House which was built in 1839. It is said that the Governor General of the Philippines at that time used this house as one of his residences, and that Dr. Jose Rizal frequently visited it.