Baguio: Colored memories
Summer is almost upon us. The mornings are still a bit cool in Manila but with Easter on the horizon, the heat will be inevitable and hard to escape. Escape, back in the day, meant planning a few days up in Baguio. Those blessed with summer homes actually moved up the Pine City for the summer. That elevated city with lowered temperatures drew both ordinary folk and the well to do. Everyone loved Baguio.
I found a slew of old postcards of Baguio recently. They were colorized postcards from the 1930s and showed landmark vistas and destinations to visit while in the cool mountain city. Baguio had been a chartered city since 1909, and these images where from a time when green was the main color that painted memories for all who visited.
Baguio was “discovered” early in the American period by colonial officials desperate to find respite from Manila’s summer inferno. It was Governor William Howard Taft who pushed for its development after paying a quick visit. Cameron Forbes, who eventually became Governor General himself, was instrumental for most of the initial transformation, aided by a master plan prepared by noted American architect and planner Daniel H. Burnham in 1905.
Forbes had wanted a rail link to Baguio and in the 1910s this was started as a spur from the main line that originated in Tutuban and ended in Damortis. The First World War and ballooning expenses put an end to the construction of the Baguio line. The national railroad eventually just operated a bus line from the last rail station.
The postcards are from period covering about three decades. The earlier ones show a cityscape without the Baguio cathedral and few structures along Session Road. The scene painted a more rural or semi-rural feel compared to later cards.
Burnham Lake was a popular subject of old postcards. The lake has always been the same size as Burnham had first planned it (detailed out by William E. Parsons around 1910). I, and many of my generation have fond memories of the lake, its boats, the bicycles and mini-cars for rent around it and the idyllic vistas from almost anywhere towards a city that was filled with green and not the wall to wall shanties and structures it is today.
Camp John Hay was also a picturesque attraction that warranted many postcard angles. Its rolling hills were apparently less tree-filled a hundred years ago. It remains one of the better places now to visit but that is sadly also changing.
Postcards from the era also featured sites around Baguio like Trinidad Valley. Visitors from overseas wanted more exotic scenery and vernacular architecture and local tribes people filled cards sent to all corners of the globe.
Baguio changed after the trauma of World War II. Independence also saw the city change to a summer capital for local officials and their entourages. Camp John Hay remained a US Armed Forces R&R center. The Fifties and Sixties still saw Baguio as a premier summer capital. I remember that we used to roll down our windows even before reaching the city, to feel the “air-conditioned” air.
Today the air is more diesel fumes than anything else. The city is chock-full of concrete and people. Pine trees are giving way to more construction in the center and ever spreading informal settlement in the peripheries. Few of Baguio’s storied hills are green anymore. With the danger of earthquakes still a reality, one wonders when and not if another tragedy will strike.
Postcards paint romantic memories and we can never go back in time. This does not mean that the city has lost its romance forever. Corners of the city still contain enough heritage structures, pine trees, and flowering shrubs to hark back to when blooms filled it year round. . . and not only during the annual flower festival, Panagbenga.
Metro Baguio is a different animal from old Baguio. The whole context of the city and its surrounding towns are compromised by haphazard developments and continuous development sprawl. This has to change in terms of outlook and mindset of local citizens and government officials.
Baguio can be greened up again and brought back to its postcard beauty but it will take concerted effort, conserved heritage, a regional tree-planting program, disaster risk reduction measures, more appropriate infrastructure development that does not only focus on cars and jeepneys, and a vision based on a master plan that makes sense.
Baguio can regain color, visitors, the smell of pines, and a sense of place. Locals and visitors need to rediscover its past, realize the challenges of its present realities and face a future with a clear idea of what Baguio could be …not just a summer capital, but the coolest , hippest city in the country.
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Feedback is welcome. Please email the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.
