CIII. Comes with Hacienda: The De La Fuente House in San Rafael, Bulacan

Some towns in the Philippines have more extant ancestral homes than others, and some had built more of them in the first place.  Because it is really a suburb (and agricultural extension) of the more urbanized town of Baliwag, my ancestral Bulacan hometown of San Rafael (of whose Holy Week and All Saints’ Day activities I had already written about previously) only has a handful of ancestral homes today.  And there were probably not many more of them earlier in the 20^th century to begin with.

I was fortunate to be able to arrange a visit to one of them, the De La Fuente House in Barangay Caingin, about midway on the main town road between the boundary with Baliwag and the San Rafael Bayan (town proper).

This house has a modest though perfectly balanced two-bay façade, with a moderately-pitched galvanized iron roof, wrought-iron grilles shielding glazed sliding windows and ventanillas underneath, and fixed metal-cut-out awnings overhead, all quite typical of wealthier houses in smaller towns like San Rafael at around the turn of the 20^th century and the following two decades or so.

The stone fence and sheet-metal gate are probably not original and likely replaced a wrought iron set that might have succumbed to rust some time ago.

Eagle-eyed readers would have caught something at the right edge of the above photo.

Indeed, the De La Fuente house and its grounds are for sale, following a bank foreclosure.  I decided to visit to see if, like many foreclosure sales, a bargain can be had by someone fancying the idea of acquiring and restoring a one-hundred-year-old Filipino house.

The two-leafed gate gives access to the very wide driveway to the right of the house.

Beside the gate in the corner on the right is a scaled-down replica of the ubiquitous Lourdes grotto, which appears to have been in vogue in many places in the 1950’s and 1960’s.  The house’s next owner will have to undertake some refurbishing and sprucing up here.

The right side elevation of the house is easy to appreciate from the driveway, a three-bay affair that is wider than the façade that we saw earlier.  The main entrance is in the center of this elevation, flanked by a pair of vestigial near-classical columns.

Like with most of its contemporaries, this house’s ground floor was likely not intended to be fully functional, and was merely a mechanism for raising the second floor off the ground to avoid soil-dwelling creatures, dampness, and the occasional flood (just like with the venerable Bahay Kubo that is raised on bamboo stilts).  As a result, the house’s lower storey appears to have sunk slightly into the ground, when in reality, the second storey (and the entire house) has probably always been just this high.

We move further along the driveway to get a better view of this aspect of the house

and realize that the structure is even longer than it might have appeared earlier.

The rear portion is a series of blocks containing the household’s service areas

that seems to be anchored by this guava tree.

The service areas include this azotea or concrete porch, which appears to be of post-war construction,

and which is useful for hanging around at and taking in the breeze after dinner, or just plain hanging laundry.

Right beside this azotea is a stone staircase that takes one up straight to the second floor via the aforementioned service areas.

We however choose to make our entrance to the house via the doorway right underneath, and directly into the not-entirely-functional ground floor, or silong.

In reality, the ground floor had been renovated to benefit from a tiled floor, and despite the expectedly low ceiling, appears to now be more serviceable than originally intended.  For instance, right beside the door to the main passageway stands a narrow display cabinet

holding various antique light shades,

likely salvaged from fixtures on the second floor and stored here for safekeeping.

A little further down the hallway, we identify the original main entrance to the house, the other side of which we had earlier seen from the right side elevation outside.

It is quite evident why this passageway is no longer accessible.

This original passageway leads directly to the main staircase

the foot of which is still paved with its likely original painted-cement tiles.

Ascending the wooden staircase

with its turned balusters all accounted for

leads us to a wooden swinging gate,

a practical safety device when there active and curious toddlers or crawlers in the family.

We are welcomed by this beautifully ornate triple archway, right overhead as one emerges from the staircase.

While not as expansive as those of its contemporaries in more urbanized towns in the country, this house’s sala is spacious enough to serve as its family’s lounge

Pride of place goes to this large Venetian-style mirror,

and directly beneath it is an antique upright piano,

a Rachals from Hamburg, Germany, from early in the 20^th century.

In another corner stands a more recent electronic keyboard instrument.

The remaining furniture is vintage and does not date from the time when the house was new, including this green-upholstered and plastic-laminated ambassador settee from the 1950’s or later.

The sets of sliding windows for the two bays of the façade are glazed, as we saw from the outside, whereas those windows facing the left and right sides of the house are of capiz shells, a usual practice a hundred years ago when glass was more costly than it is now, and capiz, as today, was plentiful and inexpensive.

Both glazed and capiz windows get their own persiana (wooden louvered) panels,

all set in grooves on the window sill to enable them to slide in parallel with the windows.

The ceiling is made of what appears to be an early type of wood composition board, frequently seen in many house ceilings in the first half of the 20^th century.

As expected, the lights above are unshaded, as their shades are now all in that display cabinet that we saw earlier on the ground floor.

The wide floorboards in the living room are set in alternating sets of two darker-colored and one lighter-colored planks.

The hallway leading to the rear of the second floor from the sala, seen at the far end in this next photo, and past the staircase’s upper balustrade,

is lit from overhead by this chandelier,

and holds a number of interesting objects, including this large neoclassical-wooden-framed mirror,

an antique platera holding the family’s heirloom flatware,

a Nativity scene on top of the platera with two Holy Infants,

glazed and inlaid cabinets with more religious images of various sizes,

and another glazed cabinet, this time with the heads and hands of several life-sized processional santos.

In another corner of the hallway stands one more display cabinet, with family trinkets of a more secular nature.

There is also a nightstand or bedside table, now placed in the hallway to hold family photographs.

From the hallway, three bedrooms can be accessed, one on the right side when coming from the sala,

and two on the left

now joined together to form one bigger space.

The single bedroom on the left holds two old beds of different styles

as well as two aparadors.

This bedroom has a set of windows set back from, but facing, the street, that keep the glare of direct sunlight out just like the ones in the sala by means of persiana panels.

Back outside in the hallway, we notice another door

leading to a thankfully modern toilet.

At the very end of the hallway is a double-door passageway

that leads to the dining room.

Above is a chandelier, which may not date from the house’s early years,

and the original dining table appears to be gone too, but a couple of old lansenas or sideboards are still in place, one from the 1950’s or so,

and the other more ancient, likely contemporary with the house or even older.

An all-plywood platera takes up one wall,

and an old clay jar sits in one corner.

The wooden floor here has narrower planks than that in the sala, but it is likewise in generally good condition.

In another corner is a narrow doorway leading to a walk-in storage or pantry, now apparently disused,

and a window to one side lets some of the bright outdoors in.

Further down and through a doorway

is the kitchen,

which, perhaps impractically, has wooden floors.

A tabletop stove is in one corner, metal sheets covering the walls to reduce the risk of fire somewhat.

In case of an actual fire, just fetch water from the laundry and bath areas slightly beyond.

The kitchen leads directly to the azotea that we saw earlier from the outside, so we can exit via the stone staircase right beside it.

This brings us back to the driveway, but more importantly, allows us to walk on further to the rear of the lot.  For the property brings with it not only the century-old De La Fuente House but also nearly five and a half hectares of land – 54,424 square meters to be exact.  A veritable mini-hacienda package, as it were.

Just a few steps away from the driveway, seen in the distance in this next photo,

one passes some sheds, still part of the property,

We keep walking, past a wire-mesh gate,

and towards some bushes and grass

and close to some banana trees

and are told to keep going, because the property line actually extends even further

to just short of those high-tension wires in the distance.

Originally cultivated for not-too-water-intensive crops like corn (since the irrigation canals are some distance away), these family-owned farmlands were, at various points, partly converted to fishponds, and into parking space for the trucks of the also-family-owned warehouse business next door.

Having since been mortgaged then foreclosed, the bank is now seeking a buyer for the entire property, with a tag price of PHP 23.5 million or just PHP 432 per square meter.  And the house gets thrown in for free, easily restorable as the “casa de hacienda”!

Since agricultural feudalism is no longer fashionable, operating this estate as an authentic hacienda will be challenging, so alternate uses for all this space will have to be found.  A skillful entrepreneur can build low-cost housing, and renovate the ancestral house to become the village’s office and multipurpose hall of sorts.  Light agro-industry, e.g., food processing, might also find a place on this property.   And a space-challenged collector, e.g., of vintage cars, will have more than enough room available to store and display his prized possessions, what with all this land.

Or perhaps you have other ideas?  Whatever they may be, better get going on them, because property bargains like this don’t come around too often.  Just be sure to invite us for polo once the stables have been constructed.

Originally published on 29 August 2010.  All text and photos copyright ©2010 by Leo D Cloma. The moral right of Leo D Cloma to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

Original comments:

jamaica1ph wrote on Aug 29, '10 Thank you again Leo for a well documented and well written documentary. This is a beautiful property but still expensive even with the house thrown in for free. Awaiting your next adventure. Best! Mike

arcastro57 wrote on Aug 30, '10 Oh my I can only afford the olive green vinyl upholstered sala set. It is so funky-looking it is perfect for my kitschy house. Haha. Have you given this a thought? Hindi naman flood-prone ang area?

rally65 wrote on Aug 30, '10 I think the price of just PHP 432 per square meter effectively is very reasonable. Of course, this requires that the next owner find some sensible use for all this land.

rally65 wrote on Aug 30, '10 No, it's not flood-prone, which is why it was not very successful as farmland or fishpond -- it's too high above the water table. Yes, we've considered acquiring this, but what do we do with all that land? Also, our own ancestral house is just a few hundred meters down the road, so this might be slightly redundant!

padua08 wrote on Sep 3, '10 Hello Leo. Would you know if the heads and hands of the processional santos are being offered for sale? Thanks!

rally65 wrote on Sep 3, '10 None of the contents of the house appear to be for sale -- at least not until the entire property (house and 5.5 hectare lot around it) are first sold.