Tags: Historical Places, Indigenous Culture, Museums
By Alexander Villafania
SAN PABLO CITY, LAGUNA – Businessman Roy Empalmado used to be a trader of wines and spirits, which allowed him to indulge in his passion for antiques.
Starting with a few items that he bought during his travels, the San Pablo native eventually collected hundreds of antique pieces, many of which were from the Spanish colonial era in the Philippines.
He placed these in his two-hectare property in San Pablo City, which is actually an old school grounds, complete with a three-floor school building that became his gallery.
Except for the third floor, all the rooms in this building are completely filled with antiques.
Not content with his collections of trinkets, paintings, and furniture, Roy embarked on a much bigger project, using what he learned from his days as an architectural student: reconstructing Spanish era houses.
He literally moved these structures, from where they once stood, to his property in San Pablo. Wood panels, pillars, bricks, roof tiles, and bricks were all dismantled carefully, transported and reconstructed.
For the last two years, he has already successfully moved and reconstructed two Spanish era houses, which have now joined his collection of other antiques.
The first he rebuilt was a 1890 ancestral house from Obando, Bulacan, a five-bedroom structure made of adobe bricks and wood. He converted this structure into a bed-and-breakfast for tourists.
The second structure, a two-floor home built in Cabay, Quezon in 1907 (already within the American era), was dismantled and rebuilt to become a restaurant. While there is some level of modernity, this restaurant retains the same classy feeling of dining in an ancestral home in the province.
Both structures are filled with classic wood furniture, varnished to give that provincial feel. Its walls are lined with paintings from Roy’s earlier antique collections.
About 70 percent of these reconstructed houses are original parts, which Roy meticulously numbered and tagged every part to ensure authenticity. Everything from the wood bandeja walls, the espejos (windows) and its pasamanos (sliding capiz doors), and the finial (decorative top of a roof) typically found in homes during those times.
With the final completion of both old houses, he opened his property for visitors and called it Sulyap (literally meaning “glimpse”) alluding to his passion of saving parts of Philippine history.
“I wouldn’t own them because these antiques and the two buildings are part of what we are as Filipinos. Others are welcome to view them and discover a little part of their past, and get the feel of how it was living in those times.”
Get more information about Sulyap Gallery Cafe
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