It was an impromptu mini-tour with Arch. Richard Bautista, one of the moving spirits behind heritage conservation efforts in Malabon. After asking the owner's permission, he led us through this ordinary looking gate and a pathway lined by banana trees into the place where the RIVERA HOUSE stood.
According to Arch. Bautista, the house was built in 1918 within a villa setting which was not common in Malabon houses by the river. Because of the perennial flooding in Malabon, the house was raised in 2007 by around two meters.
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| The original wooden second floor was raised section by section, using a jack. The ground floor was reconstructed. |
Seeing the house, my husband suddenly remembered having been there before in the late 70s/early 80s when he was with a civic organization then headed by a member of the Rivera clan. He recalls there was even a "patisan" (a place for producing patis or fish sauce) in the premises during those days, and the ground floor had adobe walls. He was delighted to see the house again, especially since much of the original house had remained intact. The present owners really went to great lengths to preserve their family legacy.
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| The house interior as it was back then. It has obviously not been lived in for some time, but it's still beautiful. |
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| The house feels like a true work of art, where the designer gave creativity a free rein. |
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| Narra and marble table on wide-plank flooring characteristic of the grand houses of those days. The bookshelves are obviously not part of the original construction. |
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| I wonder what the original flooring might have been downstairs... |
Our thanks to Arch. Bautista for this and other fascinating discoveries about Malabon which I will share with you in a future posting!
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