Glimpses of what Manila could have looked like today.

Manila, as imagined by American architect Daniel Burnham, was supposed to be a city comparable to New York and Paris. When he first arrived in the Philippines in 1904, he was inspired by what he saw and compared his "dive into the orient" to a dream.

 

City Beautiful? The Burnham Plan for Manila’s Urban Development is a touring exhibit that consists of maps, plans, photographs, and models of a Manila that might have been. Based on a 2003 show at the Metropolitan Museum, the exhibit portrays a city that combines the grid-like layout of San Francisco with the waterways of Venice.

In Burnham’s time, America was emerging as a new international power and the City Beautiful movement -- with its emphasis on harmony, beauty, and grandeur -- was supposed to embody its nascent eminence.

As a colony wrested from Spain, Manila was due for a face-lift that would turn it into doppelganger of American cities with monumental buildings, wide spaces and boulevards radiating from a central civic core.

Burnham, who took "make no little plans" as his motto, was tapped to make designs for the Philippine capital after his success at Chicago Columbian Exposition in 1893 and his following renewal of Washington D.C.

It was during this era that Filipinos like Juan Arellano, who designed the Jones Bridge, the Post Office, and the Metropolitan Theater contributed to the "golden age of Manila architecture and urban design." Called pensionados, Arellano and his contemporaries were employed by the Bureau of Public Works after they completed their education in the United States.

"The American period brought out the best in Philippine architecture," said May Lyn L. Cruz, exhibition and education programs manager of the Metropolitan Museum. "There was a lot of monumentality and formality. The American government wanted to project strength and power in a scale that was suitable to their empire."

Despite the wealth of talent, Burnham’s plans were never fully realized. The development of the Pearl of the Orient was passed from one person to another, with each architect adding his revisions. Then, World War II broke out and reduced Manila to rubble, save for a few neoclassical buildings that still exist today: the Philippine General Hospital, Philippine Normal School, the Army and Navy Club, Elk’s Club, Manila Hotel, and what is left of the Paco Train Station.

"It’s always a tricky thing to negotiate the line between development and maintaining all these landmarks, which are important to the Filipino sense of identity and history," Ms. Cruz said. "Structures are static but there are ways for them to still be useful without compromising their integrity."

City Beautiful? The Burnham Plan for Manila’s Urban Development is on view at the Atrium of SM Megamall until June 9. The exhibit moves to The Block, SM North EDSA from June 10 to June 30.

 

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