Visionary City

Coming home from SM City North a few days ago, I passed by the elegant Quezon Memorial. This monument and the large 25-hectare rotunda, elliptically-shaped, has always been a landmark for me since the early Sixties. My dad used to take us by there en route to the Bonanza restaurant on Highway 54 (EDSA).

The 66-meter-high memorial to Manuel L. Quezon took almost three decades to complete. Its story parallels Quezon City’s long march to progress, too. Quezon was still alive when the city was conceptualized in the late 1930s. A group of architects, planners, landscape architects, and engineers created the plan for a new capital since Manila was getting crowded.

It was also thought that moving the capital inland would be advisable to protect it from the threat of naval bombardment (they did not, of course, anticipate aerial bombardment).

Quezon had a vision of a large, expansive and culture-rich city. He hoped to build what would be the center of a new nation (independence was promised in 1946) and one which would be a source of pride for Filipinos.

The plan from this grand vision of Quezon was prepared by architects Harry Frost and Juan Arellano with the help of landscape architect Luos Croft and engineer AD Williams. It was approved by Congress and work started immediately.

The memorial was treeless until the mid-’70s when landscaping was introduced as plans for the other buildings fizzled out.

Unfortunately, Quezon passed away in exile during the war years. After the war, Quezon City was put back on track as capital of an independent republic. In 1945, President Sergio Osmeña, who had taken over when Quezon died, organized the Quezon Memorial Committee (the QMC) to raise funds for a memorial.

In 1948, the QMC reorganized and set a target for funds to be used to erect a grand memorial that would also celebrate the “political progress of the Philippines.” In 1949, a design competition was launched for the memorial to be built at the site of what was supposed to be the capitol complex. It was to rise on an elliptical site allocated in the 1941 plan (since the master plan was amended to move the capitol complex to Novaliches).

The competition was won by architect Federico Ilustre from a slew of entries that included Filipino and American architects and engineers. Illustre’s scheme was a trylon (like a tripod) representing Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao topped by three angels holding sampaguitas.

Quezon Avenue looked bare in 1960 when the street-side mahoganies were newly planted.

Funds were raised from private companies, but this was not enough. In 1950, Dr. Demetrio Belmonte came up with a program to raise funds called “A Nickel for the Quezon Memorial Fund Drive.” We still called our five centavos nickels then (the value was actually two and a half American cents). This drive was immensely successful as it enjoined all citizens to contribute five centavos each to the P2 million needed to build the memorial and its complex.

I had written recently about the unbuilt Jose Rizal Memorial complex. It was the same story for the Quezon Memorial. Aside from the memorial, the complex was to have its own assembly and music hall, library, and a museum and gallery.

The aerial perspective accompanying this article shows the memorial complex on its elliptical site. It was not meant to be a public park since the 1949 master plan of Quezon City allocated a 400-hectare park surrounding it (bounded by North Avenue, East and West Avenues and Timog-South-Avenue). We lost all this park land except for the Parks and Wildlife, which is a fraction of the original area (but that’s another story).

Entry to Quezon City was via a smaller rotunda at the boundary with Manila, the Welcome rotunda.

In 1952, the construction of the memorial started. The bas relief panels, depicting the history of the Philippines, were commissioned in Italy and came in batches until 1959. In the 1960s, work continued at a snail’s pace, hampered by escalating costs.

In 1969, Imelda Marcos inaugurated a Rotary-funded musical fountain, reputed to be the largest in Southeast Asia at the time. That same year, lights were added to illuminate the monument at night. Finally, it took another nine years for the monument to be completed — in 1978 — and Quezon’s remains were moved in.

In the ‘80s and ‘90s, the memorial was turned into a park. Controversy surrounded some of the “improvements.” Many felt that the sanctity of the memorial was compromised by the more active park activities introduced in the ‘90s. Unfortunately, the surrounding 400-hectare planned parkland was slowly eaten up by national government buildings and the city government was running out of park land for Quezon City’s booming population.

Today, there are plans to rectify the situation without straying from the memorial’s original intent. The city celebrates its foundation day on Aug. 19. Mayor Herbert Bautista and his Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte are preparing the build out of a master plan started by Mayor Sonny Belmonte (now Speaker of the House of Representatives).

It took close to three decades to complete the 66-meter-high monument.

The Quezon Memorial is still a landmark, but the number of landmarks in QC is increasing. The district of Cubao and large complexes like SM City North are the city’s new and popular landmarks. The aim of the city’s new master plan is to make sure that all this development is framed in a vision for a sustainable future.

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For this and more stories of the memorial and the history of Quezon City, come to an exhibit I am curating called “SM&QC: Visions of a City” at The Block in SM City North. It opens on Aug. 13. I will also give a number of lectures on Quezon City’s landmarks in the week surrounding QC Day.

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.