The Dauz House and Sabangan House

Unlike in other old towns, there are hardly any bahay na bato left in Bayambang, whether built in the Spanish or American colonial era. 

There are four most likely reasons, and the first is the most obvious one: the ravages of the elements: fire, flood, and typhoons, not to mention termites. The second is the need to keep up with the aesthetics en vogue with the approach of modernity and novel aesthetics, with great consideration given to the prevailing economic realities (i.e., the price of materials and labor).

Another reason could be the accounts of juez de cuchillo or massacres that happened during the Palaris rebellion, when the houses of local residents who refused to join the uprising were torched or that the houses of those who did received the same destructive fate.

A fourth, and historically confirmed, reason is World War II. According to the account of local historian and educator, Dr. Clarita D.G. Jimenez, in the 1940s, "The Japanese atrocities left bitter memories among the Bayambangueños. Big buildings like the church, the schools and the big houses were the target of bombings as these were suspected to be the headquarters of the enemy. ... Many Bayambangueños joined the guerrilla forces which fought against the Japanese Imperial Army. Some of them were tortured, killed and forced to join the infamous Bataan Death March."

Aside from old family pictures of locals, archival photos from the National Historical Institute, resourcefully accessed and reproduced by Municipal Consultant on Museum, Culture and Arts Gloria D.V. Valenzuela, confirm that there were indeed such houses in town. 

One of the most historically significant of those must be the Dauz house at the junction of Del Pilar St. and Quezon Blvd. because it became the Malacañang of the North during the revolution against the Spanish government.

Another NHI photo is that of the Sabangan house, which is noted for its exemplary style. 

They were constructed in the American colonial period, but they were fine examples of the bahay na bato (at kahoy) Hispano-Filipino architectural style that bloomed during the Spanish colonial period. Some call the style  Antillean, to be exact, to refer to the Antilles in Central America. They featured most of the elements present in such a house, including its fixtures and furniture inside, from antesala to zaguan.

The Dauz House, the caption reads, was "built in 1933 and designed with tall, wide windows with sliding capiz shell panels." The Sabangan House, on the other hand, was also "built in 1933, and features a continuous balcony or gallery at the second floor of the house, cutwork in the eaves and an occasional acroteria in the roof."

Notably, the combination of American, Spanish, and indigenous architectural elements is uniquely Filipino, and this is what makes houses like these historically and architecturally significant. This is a little reminder that it was in the Philippines where, to quote historians, "the first instance of true globalization occurred," thanks to the Galleon Trade. It is where cultures from all the four corners of the world did not just clash or meet and match, but actually mixed and melded, resulting in the fusion of elements in our cultural markers with those of others. We can observe this consistently not just in Filipino architecture but practically in all facets of Filipino culture -- cuisine, wear, games, literature, music, dance, and so on.

It is only in the Philippines where these various styles traditionally mixed and matched to suit an overall theme or mood: capiz windows that remind of Japanese paper windows, the expected ornate baroque details, and the Art Deco and Art Nouveau flourishes in the ensuing American decades. It is akin to finding pineapple finials and fu dogs (Chinese lions/gargoyles) together in one notable neo-Gothic church, the San Agustin Church in Intramuros, or baroque churches with a Borobudur-like (Javanese) silhouette and Eastern symbols like sun faces (Paoay church), and Churrigaresque detailings, solomonic columns and other neo-Mudejar touches, pagoda-like bell towers, and so on, in other extant old structures throughout the archipelago and even in iconic objects like the jeepney.

There is a pervasive halo-halo sensibility -- as Gilda Cordero-Fernando puts it, though others scoff at it as "mongrel culture" -- but it is one that is not totally thoughtless. The eclecticism, Fernando Nakpil Zialcita notes, is more careful than desultory cherry-picking. The resulting cultural chimera that is the Filipino halo-halo culture to the outsider actually 'works' on some level of collective understanding. There is an azotea (a type of balcony) and there is a banggera (a wooden dish rack protruding from the kitchen), a ventanilla (little sliding windows beneath the sliding capiz ventana) and a batalan (washing area with bamboo flooring), a comedor (dining room) and a dapugan (dirty kitchen). Common furnishings included the sala set (living room chairs and center table), estante or platera (kitchenware cabinet), pugon (clay oven), almario (pillow stacker), and kama (wooden bed) with ikamen or woven mat. 

In specific terms, what this means is that the Antillean house architecture was adjusted to suit the tropics, and this resulted in several elements of the bahay kubo being retained, thus distinguishing the bahay na bato at kahoy from the Spanish pueblo house and similar colonial residential architectures in the Antilles and the rest of Latin America. These ingenious adjustments are the following, as others have took pains to note: making the structure more earthquake-proof, allowing more light into the house, allowing more air to circulate, shielding the house from the rain and the heat of the sun, and raising the floor as a precaution against flooding. We can say this tendency to Filipinize the foreign is a case of reverse colonialism.

These adjustments were no doubt present in the original houses of Bayambang's oldest families so that the houses looked like upgraded versions of the traditional bahay kubo or alulong.