If there is one place in the metropolis that has a solid association with Apolinario Mabini, it would be the road and the neighborhood called Nagtahan which straddles between the present-day districts of San Miguel and Santa Mesa in the City of Manila. Nagtahan got its name from a word in Tagalog which means to stop or end. It was named so because in the olden days, Calle Nagtahan was a dead end, ending a few meters before the bank of the Pasig River. Despite that, it grew as a rural suburb of Manila during the late Spanish colonial period as some decided to take residence in the area. One…
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Reviving Quiapo’s Heritage: The Story of the Padilla House
It has often been stressed here and in other sites that Manila’s Quiapo district is like a diamond in the mud. There are so many beauty to be discovered in the midst of the urban decay which sadly permeates this part of the city. Nevertheless, there are some reasons to be hopeful for Quiapo, with the presence of preserved landmarks like the Bahay Nakpil-Bautista, the ongoing efforts to restore Kasa Boix, and a revived heritage structure which the Urban Roamer will be writing about today, the Padilla House.
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Estero de San Miguel Reborn
The success of a gargantuan task such as cleaning up a major river lies on how well its tributaries have been rehabilitated and cleaned up. It is good to know that the current efforts of the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission (PRRC) takes that lesson to heart as they take on the huge task of dealing with the metropolis’ esteros. That is no easy task, and there is still a long way to go. But there have been a few success stories that should serve as a reason to be optimistic in all this. like what the PRRC, the Metro Manila Development Authority, (MMDA) and partner organizations have done to one…
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A Night at Malate
Much has been said about Manila’s Malate district, more so about the nightlife scene in this fabled part of the city. Like the story of the city itself, the story of the Malate nightlife scene has been a story of a past glory that was lost and now trying to revive itself again. As someone who admittedly is not much into the nightlife scene, the Urban Roamer has been witness to how the district somehow became alive again in the early 2000s, especially with the popularity of the Roxas Boulevard’s Baywalk area as a hangout at night. Fell into a slump after 2007, which coincided with the disappearance of those Baywalk…