Spatial Regulation as Prophylaxis:
Urban Hygiene and Colonial Architecture in the
Age of American Imperialism in the Philippines
T
he ambitious imperial venture of America
to colonize the Philippine archipelago
commenced in the city of Manila at the
turn-of-the-century. After the surrender of Ma-
nila in August 1898, the Americans took up
their positions in the city and commenced to
govern Manila. In the process of takeover, Ma-
nila as a new American colonial city received
a massive urban transformation to restructure
its urban built environment as a model colonial
outpost. Charged with imperialist agenda, this
urban overhaul was initiated to facilitate ef-
ficient colonial governance and to signify the
power and prestige of the new colonial order.
Manila Under the Stars and Stripes
When the civil government was established,
enormous power to shape the urban space was
concentrated in hands of the Municipal Board.
As legislating body, they were colonial agents
charged with deploying the technologies of
power such as town planning regulation and
police supervision to categorize and control the
indigenous population. In such a process, ur-
ban planning became the mechanism by which
colonial adjudications of cleanliness, civility
and modernity were realized from the ground
up. The Municipal Board’s vision of urban life
was strictly guided by a mandate codified
in detail in the City Charter of Manila, which
conjured spatial and environmentalist metro-
politan strategies that mimicked those from the
metropole. These ranged from the prevention
of conflagrations to the construction of public
Gerard Lico
107
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
infrastructure; from abating public nuisance to
the maintenance of social hygiene. Under the
charter’s provision, the Board was empowered
to take on the supreme role of a social architect
responsible for shaping the urban built environ-
ment of the colonial metropolis. The sense of
entitlement of the colonist to transform the
space was driven by the rhetoric of Manifest
Destiny, an idealistic and benevolent rationale
to bring freedom and democratic order across
the globe regardless of whether anyone wanted
it or not. Coupled with this belief was a per-
ceived notion that Manila was a pathologic
space, a city brimming with infective agents
brought about by unsanitary habits of its native
inhabitants, the colonial municipal authorities
initiated an extensive site clearance and stern
urban cleansing of spaces in Manila. This was a
harsh prerequisite of colonial hygiene and spa-
tial disinfection, which the Filipinos had to en-
dure, so that the site could be prepared for the
building of monumental edifices that signified
the American democratic and civilizing mission.
Medicalization of Space
In the period’s medical texts and commission
reports, the image of the Filipinos was con-
structed as subhuman and the reservoir of la-
tent infection. Through the lens of the American
sanitary gaze, Filipinos were viewed as brown,
lumpen filth which Americans must necessar-
ily avoid contact with. The sanitary measures
encouraged by colonial authorities focused on
cleaning up the islands and reconstructing the
108
Pears’ soap “White Man’s Burden” advertisement
image of the Filipino as a clean, white individu-
al. The colonial officials aimed at submitting the
social body to an encompassing administrative
gaze that was to discipline the physical body
and the people’ s life world, as well as supervise
the native’s physical reproduction in view of la-
bor force and colonial productivity.
Implicated by the new spatial order were the
negotiations of power between the municipal
authorities and the native population in shap-
ing, representing, and using the urban built en-
vironment in colonial Manila. The ordering of
the built environment in the Philippines under
the American colonial authorities necessitated
a radical approach to social and urban plan-
ning policy, the implementation of which was
directed towards sanitation, mass housing, and
urban aesthetics – all the physical consequenc-
es of colonialism’s tactic of framing the colonial
Filipinos depicted in the New York Tribune
subjectivity. Colonial modernity, which conflat-
ed altruism and intimidation was made more
palpable in the transformation of the urban
space and the building of colonial infrastruc-
ture necessary to carry out the cultivation of
the indigenous population for what was termed
as “techno-cosmopolitanism,” a premise assert-
ing that society must be designed, planned and
organized through the technologies of both art
and science.
The early years of American occupation was
plagued by a succession of epidemic diseases
attributed to unhygienic domestic practices of
the Filipinos at that time. Building ordinances
were issued to prevent the outbreak and spread
of diseases. In the context of Manila’s epidem-
ic-stricken urban terrain, allegedly filthy native
customs, habits, and spatial practices were
singled out as the causes of the proliferation
of various tropical diseases which threatened
the equilibrium of the hygienic colonial order. A
sweeping colonial urban program was designed
by the American colonial authorities, conscript-
ing the expertise of imperial physicians, sani-
tarians, planners, architects and engineers with
disciplinary strategies to “cure” the unhealthy
colonial environment by excising its dangerous
and disorderly elements and reforming the un-
wholesome native spatial practices. American
colonial urbanism crafted the geometry of spa-
tial regulation, instilling new disciplinary tech-
nologies by controlling social behaviors though
indirect impositions encrypted in spatial and
built forms.
Epidemics justified the medicalization of space,
both public and private, and biopolitical reinven-
tion of native spatial behaviors through the alli-
ance of tropical medicine, sanitary science and
urban design. The native bodies thus became
Bahay kubo, the typical domestic type of the Filipinos at the turn of the 19th century.
a biopolitical object of constant surveillance,
submitting itself to the supervisory actions of
colonial state which infiltrated the private and
intimate detail of the native’s everyday spatial
practices in the semblance of sanitary activism
and reform.
The colonial Board of Health had been sub-
jected to a severe and long continued strain by
the presence of bubonic plague in the city of
Manila at the time of its organization in 1898 109
and more so when the cholera epidemic com-
menced in Manila on 20 March 1902. The suc-
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
cessive outbreak of bubonic plague and cholera
were heuristic moments in the galvanization of
a new sanitary order in the Philippines. Apart
from the application of therapeutic medicine,
the hygienic interventions instituted by colo-
nial health authorities were directed towards
socio-spatial surveillance of the natives. For
Foucault the modes of state intervention during
110
Vaccination adminstered to a Chinese resident of Binondo at the height of the bubonic plaque in 1902
times of epidemic outbreak were neither thera-
peutic nor medical in the strict sense. Rather,
they were concerned with modes of life, food,
dwelling and environment. The regulations ap-
plied in times of epidemic were derived from
“emergency plans” used in plague-infected
towns. (Foucault 1994, vol.III, 727) Matters of
spatiality and surveillance of population soon
became the obsession of the colonizing state.
Moreover, the moment of epidemic emergency
gave rise to disciplinary diagrams [schemas
disciplinaires], a socio-spatial schema requiring
strict spatial portioning, careful surveillance,
detailed inspection and order. Foucault (1977,
197) teases spatial description of a quarantine
at the height of an epidemic:
This enclosed, segmented space, observed
at every point, in which the individuals
are inserted in a fixed place, in which the
slightest movements are supervised, in
which all events are recorded, in which
an uninterrupted work of writing links the
centre and periphery, in which power is
exercised without division, according to
a continuous hierarchical figure, in which
each individual is constantly located, ex-
amined and distributed among the living
beings, the sick and the dead - all this
constituted a compact model of the disci-
plinary method.
While Foucault’s language painted a grim pic-
ture of the mechanism of power into which
this model of surveillance would develop, these
practices and others instituted during this time
marked a certain rigor of observation and at-
tention to detail that would set a tone for the
implementation medico-sanitary surveillance.
The American method of colonial hygienic
surveillance was maneuvered in the same dis-
ciplinary logic explicated by Foucault. Such
policies of compartmentalization and surveil-

Native open-air restaurant
lance in combating epidemic of plague and
cholera were highly meticulous and militaristic:
sanitary squads moved through the city, street-
by-street, quarter-by-quarter, house-by-house,
accounting the daily census of the living and
dead, arresting suspected and infected native
bodies for medical incarceration, the cleansing
or burning of contaminated nipa houses, and
the removal and disposal of the dead by crema-
tion boundaries.
The Onslaught of Epidemic
This moment of sanitary warfare coincided with
American campaign to win the Philippine-Amer-
ican war. Such intersection prompted many
scholars of Philippine history to consider the
cholera epidemic of 1902 as a watershed event
in the genesis of American sanitary order in the
Philippines – a time “when the war against chol-
era and the ‘pacification of Filipinos were barely
differentiated, when medico-sanitary measures
111
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
and popular resistance to such, were continuing
acts of war. (Ileto 1988, 127) The decision to
declare a medical emergency and to grant wide
interventionist powers to health officials was
political, not medical. The campaign against the
plague infection and cholera outbreak repre-
sented the severity of American colonial thera-
peutics, “necessitating the use of force in the
administering of medicine” (Lindley 1902, 390)
and justified the aggressive overhaul of the
physical urban space and the native practices
that occurred within its domain. Sanitary con-
trols affected traditional practices such as visits
to the sick, attendance at funerals, burial prac-
tices, and indigenous curative and therapeutic
regimen. As David Arnold elaborated in Impe-
rial Medicine and Indigenous Societies: “seeing
itself as rational, scientific and universalistic,
western medicine defined itself in opposition to
the presumed irrationality and superstition of
indigenous medicine. The customs and beliefs
 of the people were treated as obstacles to be
overcome, obscurantism to be brushed aside
by the new scientific knowledge” (1989, 18).
These controls deprived the indigenous com-
munity of valuable weapons used by people
everywhere to ease social tensions at times of
traumatic illness, death, and mourning. But on
a larger urban scale, the spatial consequence
of the bubonic plague was urban vigilance and
campaign against rodents, strict maritime quar-
112 antine, and rat-proofed architecture codified in
the Manila’s new building code; on the other
hand, the cholera epidemic birthed the concept
of sanitary relocation sites appropriately called
Sanitary Barrios, modern water infrastructure,
piped water systems, underground networks of
sewage conduits, and the medicalized domes-
tic architectural prototype called the “Sanitary
Model House.” Epidemics in Manila, therefore,
triggered the installation of infrastructural sys-
tems of colonial modernity.

The knowledge of disease etiology generated

from the experience of urban epidemic resulted
in the consolidation and legislation of a colonial
Building Code, known as Ordinance No. 78,
whose provisions were embedded with medico-
sanitary prescription to assure the salubrity of
the future constructions in Manila. In the long
run, the imposition of hygienic maneuvers
by the colonial state to contain the epidemic
and prevent its recurrence yielded a legacy of
spatial technologies embedded in the colonial
building code and that would forever alter the
Filipino domestic and urban spheres.

The swift sanitary response of the American

military hygienist to arrest the onslaught of
bubonic plague before it could result to a mas-
sive death toll was lauded in May 1903 issue
of The National Geographic Magazine under the
title of “The Conquest of Bubonic Plague in the
Philippines.” The article recounted the whole-
sale eradication of bubonic plague in the Philip-
pines, which had “no precedent in the history
of plague.” The erasure of plague pathogen in
The war on germs were fought with military stringency and
hygienic precision.

House-to-house chemical disinfection
Manila was attributed to the “tireless vigilance
and ceaseless war on rats and filth by Major
Meacham, Chief Sanitary Inspector of Manila,
and his subordinate,” without which “a wave
of plague would have swept Manila and the
islands as destructive…as cholera itself.” (Na-
tional Geographic Magazine May 1903, 185)
During this time, the medical world was uncer-
tain of the mechanics of plague transmission al-
though scientist already suspected that rodents
were involved in its etiology. The role of the rat
flea as a carrier of plague existed as a theory
of the Indian Plague Commission and was not
verified until 1905 by the same Commission.
Adopting the British anti-plague methods in co-
lonial India, the Board of Health issued Circular
Letter No. 11 on 30 June 1901 informing its
sanitary officers the modes of plague transmis-
sion. The Board of Health demanded that all
clothing, bedding and furniture be disinfected
and “all valueless clothing and other effects ex-
posed to infection” be burnt. The dust of streets
should be cleaned and soaked with disinfecting
carbolic acid solution to prevent the entry of
113
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
germs through the cracks or wounds in the bare
feet of natives and coolies. Public urban space
was closely monitored: prohibiting the congre-
gation of individuals at fairs, celebrations, and
pilgrimages; the surveillance and supervision of
markets; the cleanliness of the soil; the regular
removal of garbage; the cleanliness of habita-
tions; the particular supervision of places, work-
shops, forges, etc., intended for occupancy by
the laboring and industrial classes; the cleaning
and regular disinfection of water-closets, public
and private; supervision and disinfection of la-
trines and cesspools – were among the actions
taken to regulate the urban space.
Domiciliary Surveillance
Premises infested with rats were declared as
menace to public safety and required the own-
ers to make some alterations such as: the re-
moval of wooden floors in basements, cellars,
storerooms, etc., and substitute such with con-
crete and other hard materials, such as stone,
tile, brick, etc.; the repair of walls and other
badly constructed or decaying structures; the
114
Sanitary squad with their pail of carbolic acid, which were administered on domestic and public toilets
protection of holes, small windows and other
openings on ground floors by wire netting; the
abatement of all accumulations of lumber and
other refuse from yards. Non-compliance to
the said orders meant demolition, or at worst
burning of the rat-infested nipa (thatch) houses.
Radical remedial measures such as the many
instances of house burnings, ignited the hatred
of natives, especially the poor who suffered the
most, for those bearing the torch of medico-
sanitary authority.
Since the appearance of plague cases in Ma-
nila rats infected with bubonic plague bacilli
had been found in over 500 houses. Lt. Colo-
nel Maus, who was detailed as the president
of the Board of Health, disparaged the state
architecture in Manila as a contributing fac-
tor in the diffusion of plague bacillus: “The
character of the buildings of Manila and their
crowded condition offer every opportunity for
the growth and increase of rodents. The nipa
colonies within the city limits also afford a
splendid place for their propagation.” (Report of
the Philippine Commission 1902, 337) In view
of these conclusions, it became necessary for
the Manila Municipal Board, at the behest of
the Board of Health, to legislate an ordinance
regulating the structure of buildings. Municipal
Ordinance No. 5, “An Ordinance Relating to
Buildings and Premises Infected with Bubonic
Plague” was enacted on 16 December 1901.
(Report of the Municipal Board of the City of
Manila 1902, 9) This ordinance possessed an
architectonic impact which compelled owners
of plague-infected house to remove or repair
their dwellings in accordance with architectural
prescription of the Board of Health in order to
deny rodents breeding habitat. Cement ground
floors were laid, double walls and double ceil-
ings, a potential refuge for rats, were removed,
defects in plumbing were remedied, whitewash

House of a cholera victim tagged for burning
was profusely applied, and, in general, nothing
was left undone that could render buildings
where plague had occurred safe for human
resettlement. If the owner failed to adapt the
prescribed rat-proofing methods, their houses
would be expeditiously demolished.
As a result of this municipal ordinance over
600 domiciles were remodeled, cleaned, and
transformed into a habitable condition, and in a
number of cases the property owners expended
$500 to $3,000 to undertake the appropriate
repairs and renovation.(Report of the Philippine
Commission 1902, 338)
When Manila was threatened by a cholera epi-
demic in 1902 to 1904, the American doctors
and sanitarians crusaded against disease with
medico-sanitary intervention that placed much
emphasis on both on regulation of physical
space and control of individual spatial practice.
115
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
Here, environmental cleanups were deemed as
important as the supervision of personal con-
tact and social interaction.
The epidemic was introduced in Manila from
Canton, China. When news of cholera epidem-
ic had occurred in Canton on 3 March 1902
and in Hong Kong on 8 March 1902 reached
Manila, the Philippine Commissioner of Public
Health immediately banned the importation of
vegetable harvested from Southern China, Ma-
nila’s chief supplier of vegetables. The imported
produce had been found to be fertilized with
infected human excreta. A cholera victim would
have a medical condition of uncontrollable di-
arrhea leading to rapid dehydration and death.
The person’s excrement is highly infectious and
must be properly disposed of. For this reason,
the cholera outbreak gave impetus to the politi-
cization of excremental matters, justifying the
American colonial sanitarian’s obsessive regula-
116
Cholera dentention camp located in the grounds of San Lazaro Hospital
tion of native bowel movement. A whole range
of infrastructure devoted to native’s excremen-
tal practices would emerge in the cityscape.
In addition to general cleaning of the physical
environment, the American method to suppress
the cholera epidemic attempted to regulate the
personal contact, the domestic and social life of
the natives as bacteriological knowledge justi-
fied this expanding medical gaze.
Right away, the colonial authorities mobilized
its resources and instituted rigid measures for
suppressing the disease. It immediately assem-
bled its legion of health and sanitary enforcers
composed of 31 army physicians loaned from
the Army Medical Corps who commanded a
task force of 1,500 sanitary inspectors, nearly
all American. The number of employees was
subsequently increased until it reached 5,000.
(Worcester 1909, 24) Some of them were
detailed as medical inspectors or quarantine
officers; while other, took charge of the chol-
era hospital and detention camp. Manila was
divided into twelve districts for the purpose of
sanitary surveillance, each placed under the
charge of a medical officer who supervised a
corps of 30 to 60 men in conducting house-
to-house inspections. At initial stages of the
epidemic, house-to-house inspections were
performed both day and night so as to prevent
cases from escaping the notice of the board.
Such a vigilant measure was, “necessary in or-
der to detect cases which were being hidden by
the natives, presumably to prevent being sent
to the detention camp.”(Report of the Philip-
pine Commission 1902, 342) Each district was
provided with a disinfecting pump and chemi-
cal disinfectants which were used to thoroughly
purge the pathogens from the infected house
after the cholera victim and the other contacts
had been removed. After the meticulous disin-
fection the house was closed for occupancy for
five days. People exposed to the disease were
sent to a detention camp near San Lazaro ca-
pable of handling 2,500 inmates, but with the
rise of cases it quickly became overcrowded, so
the authorities hastily set up a tent camp in the
district of Santa Mesa.
Adding to the fear and panic of the disease, the
forced isolation of the sick, the rounding up of
household contacts and the sending of these to
detention camps were greatly resented by the
natives. House disinfection, forced detention,
and compulsory quarantine infringed on the pri-
vate rights, familial bonds and domestic space
of the Filipinos. Heiser (1936, 106) described
this military-style of sanitary arrest, which pro-
voked so much fear among the natives:
Uniformed men clattered up with ambulances
and without ceremony lifted the sick from their
Vaccination adminstered to a Chinese resident of Binondo at the height of the bubonic plaque in 1902
mats and carted them away from their wailing
families. The husbands, wives, and children
could not understand why they were forbidden
to follow. Four times out of five this was the last
they ever saw their loved ones until shortly they
received a curt notice to come to the hospital
and claim their dead.
Hysteria erupted among the Filipinos and Chi-
nese as every house inspection brought the
household closer to the possibility of being sent 117
to concentration camps, of being subjected to
disinfecting bath, and of the destruction of their
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
property. As a consequence, they made every
effort to conceal the cases from the sanitary
inspectors and even throw their dead in rivers
rather than take their chances of having their
property burned and themselves sent to deten-
tion camp. (Report of the Philippine Commis-
sion 1902, 562) To deal with this situation the
colonial authorities dispatched its huge military
force spread all over the entire urban space.
 Spectacle of Site Clearing and the
Burning of Farola
It was believed that Manila’s cholera epidemic
originated from the Farola (lighthouse) district
in Manila, a narrow tongue of land extending
to the sea where Pasig River intersects Manila
Bay, and “where an aggregation of overcrowded
and filthy shacks presented conditions favora-
ble to its spread.” (Report of the Philippine
Commission 1902, 268) The infection was
118 attributed to a smuggled shipment of presum-
ably contaminated cabbages and other green
vegetables from Canton, via Hong Kong, which
had been denied entry into the port. Immedi-
ately after that, the crew tossed the vegetables
overboard from the vessel to be washed ashore,
where the poor natives of Barrio Farola gath-
ered and ate them. (Ibid., 342) Another theory
to explain the localization of infection in Farola
was that many of its residents were stevedores,
fishermen and petty smugglers who could have
gotten the disease through contact with sailors
from Southern China. (Ibid., 420)
Government Order 66 was issued to burn the houses of the Farola district at the height of the cholera epidemic of 1902
In the belief that they could restrict the out-
break in Farola, the colonial health authorities
bordered the district by military-installed cor-
don sanitaire to quarantine its residents but
failed miserably as several natives escaped the
blockade by water in the cover of the night. The
impossibility of disinfection impelled the Board
of Health to adopt the following resolution on
26 March 1902:
Whereas the district known as the Farola Bar-
rio, of the city of Manila, is at present time
infected with Asiatic cholera, and a center of
infection for the disease, and it is therefore a
menace to the public health, and is hereby de-
clared a public nuisance, be it Resolved, That
the houses and property in this barrio be ap-
praised by a committee appointed by the com-
missioner of public health, and that such hous-
es and property be destroyed at the discretion
of the committee so appointed. (Ibid., 323)
Without delay, Secretary of Interior and Philip-
pine Commissioner Dean C. Worcester ordered
the execution of Government Order 66, which
called for the burning of the Farola district.
Colonel Maus was reluctant to set the entire
slum neighborhood ablaze but, after being
commanded to do so three times, he expedited
the draconian order. Just before setting fire to
the area, the military forcibly removed all of its
residents, whether ill or well, to a concentration
camp at San Lazaro.
The anticipated burning of Farola was a subject
of front-page news on the day of its destruc-
tion. Manila Freedom, an American-owned
newspaper enthusiastically announced the
forthcoming destruction of Barrio Farola and
the urban relief it might bring in course of its
obliteration:
Farola barrio, otherwise known as “Shack-
town,” which has been a source of considerable
anxiety to the health authorities because of its
cholera breed propensity, will in the course of
the day or so be reduced to ashes. This district
is about the worst in Manila because of its un-
Burning of the cholera-infected district of Farola in March 28, 1902
sanitary conditions, and its removal will be a
source of great satisfaction to the residents of
Manila. (Manila Freedom 28 March 1902,1)
A day before its scheduled burning, the town
was virtually a ghost town as cans upon cans
of carbolic acid were spread over the district so
as to reduce the dangers of the germs, being
spread elsewhere by fire and smoke. The au-
thorities allowed one person to be left behind
for each house in the barrio, to guard the prop-
119
erty until the final conflagration.
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
On a Good Friday morning, 28 March 1902,
the “pest-breeding Farola was burned to the
ground.”(Manila Freedom 29 March 1902, 12)
Shortly after 5 o’clock in the morning the torch
was applied to the doomed village of 125 dry
nipa shacks and in a matter of minutes the
entire district was aflame. Liberal quantities
of kerosene had been applied at intermediate
points and this pungent odor, interacting with
the corrosive stench of carbolic disinfectant
“made life miserable for the health officers and
 police.” (Manila Times 30 March 1902, 8) The
unsympathetic pyro-spectacle, supervised by
Major Meacham and Colonel Maus and wit-
nessed by Commissioner Worcester himself,
necessitated a “strong force of police” (Manila
Freedom 29 March 1902, 12) to ensure the
successful execution of official order. Hundreds
of natives gathered to watch the destruction
of what health authorities decried as an urban
health nuisance, the smoke from which had
120 overspread the whole Binondo district. The
blaze lasted for a short time and died as quickly
as it had risen, yet this was only the beginning
of a state-sanctioned house burning spree of
“unsanitary habitations” of the poor natives of
Manila.
The burning of Farola was heralded by the
American press in Manila as a symbolic event
that “has lifted a load of great anxiety from
the shoulders of health authorities. They have
not relaxed their unceasing vigilance, however,
but are putting forth renewed efforts towards
bringing Manila back to its former healthful
state,”(Ibid.) while the Filipino press denounced
the authoritarian and coercive schemes of the
Board of Health as inhumane acts of arson.
Moreover, rumors were circulated among the
natives that the burning of plebian houses in
Farola was a part of an American real estate
conspiracy to develop the dense district into an
exclusive residential neighborhood and ware-
house facility for the rich Americans at the ex-
pense of evicted natives. (Report of the Philip-
pine Commission 1902, 271)
A series of nipa house burnings immediately
followed the after Farola fire with the issuance
of Board of Health resolution on 12 April 1902:
Whereas all houses constructed of light materi-
als, by reason of their construction, can not be
properly disinfected when infected with chol-
era, they are hereby declared a menace to the
public health and a nuisance; Resolved, That
such structures shall be entirely or partially de-
stroyed, at the discretion of the board of health
but, before such destruction, shall be appraised
by the board of health. (Ibid., 324)
The burning of houses accomplished three-fold
agenda: first, for disinfection of urban space in
order to contain of possible spread of the patho-
gen from the house of infectives to neighboring
district; and, for the instant erasure of decrepit
architecture of poor natives and appalling ur-
ban squalor tainting the imperial metropolitan
imaginary. The cleansing/clearance of the site
rendered the urban space ready for regenera-
tion, imperial embellishment, and hegemonic
social control of the unruly and diseased bodies
of the modern metropolis.
Building Regulations and
Excremental Control
The onslaught of epidemics had major architec-
tural implications, which brought about many
technological changes to Filipino domestic
space in order to minimize the indoor pollution
it generated. The municipal imaginary of salu-
brious urbanity had implicated the native nipa
(thatch) houses as foci of potential infection and
launched an invasive system of policing, which
encroached on the bounds of domestic privacy
to expose the filth, dark, claustrophobic and
disease-harboring domesticity obscured from
the imperial sanitary gaze. The architecture of
the native dwelling was radically overhauled
by the municipal and health authorities who
ordered the installation of latrines and other
domestic services and the structural modifica-
tion of other internal features of the urban nipa
houses through congeries of military orders
and ordinances. Structures were ordered rat-
proofed in response to plague-carrying rodents.
In 1905, the city’s Building Ordinance, brim-
ming with provisions against house infections,
was passed. The ordinance stringently fixed the
minimum standards and stipulated medicalized
guidelines for house density, illumination, venti-
lation and waste disposal. The use of the toilet
was introduced in 1902 at the height of the

The first public toilet under the pail conservancy system, known as cubeta
Wagon carrying pails filled with human excrement for disposal
cholera epidemic among the communities of
nipa houses in Manila through the pail conserv-
ancy system or cubeta. By May 1902 the actu-
al organization of the pail system commenced.
Overseers were immediately dispatched to
the district of Santa Cruz, San Nicolas, and
Tondo to conduct a house-to-house inspection
of the closets arrangements and to order the
homeowner to make the necessary repair to
accommodate the installation of the pail sys-
tem. These orders consisted mainly of providing
seat covers, ventilator pipes, repairs to floors
and vaults, and resealing the vaults tightly so
121
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
that gases were only allowed to escape by way
of ventilation pipes. (Report of the Philippine
Commission 1902, 371)
In the absence of metropolitan sewers, the
system provided each household with wooden
buckets, which were collected daily by the mu-
nicipal excrement wagons. Public toilets were
built in congested nipa districts.
The pail-conservancy system, by 1905, grew to
a point where the number of pails installed in
private buildings was almost doubled. In July,
 1904, a total of 52,794 pails were cleaned,
whereas in the month of June, 1905, the de-
partment handled 95,254 pails. In the pail sys-
tem the municipality saw a profitable venture
as the monthly revenue of the city skyrocketed.
(Annual Report of the Municipal Board of Ma-
nila 1905, 25) Each household was charged by
the municipality P2.50 per month or P7.50 per
quarter for each pail, which was “rather high for
many families to pay,” according to the Board
122 of Health. On the hand, the pail service estab-
lished in public closets was furnished and main-
tained by the municipality gratis. (Report of the
Bureau of Health 1909, 35)

The increase in public patronage in 1905 could

be attributed to the aggressive campaign and
effectice enforcement of the sanitary law by
the Manila police, who arrested 375 individu-
als for “neglecting to occupy a public station”
and another 134 for “committing a public
nuisance.”(Annual Report of the Municipal
Board of Manila 1905, 206) Notwithstanding
the increase in public usage of the pail system,
the gradual wear-and-tear acquired by pails
with years of continuous use inevitably took its
toll. The system soon became a source of an-
noyance to the general public as the objectiona-
ble stench escaped from defective wooden pails
which had been permeated with the offensive
liquid. (Annual Report of the Municipal Board of
Manila 1904, 82) Immortalizing this public con-
tempt and urban disturbance generated with
the daily transport of excrement pail through
the streets of Manila was an editorial cartoon
found in pages of the politically-charged native
publication Lipang Kalabaw circulated in 1907.
(see figure “Municipal Hygiene”)

In 1905, a latrine system was also developed

Pail design for the cubeta toilet system
based on toilet structures prevalent in the town
of Antipolo. The authorities banned the use of
canals or esteros for bathing and washing and
established a new type of communal architec-
ture that combined the functions of toilet, bath,
and laundry supplied continuously with clean
water. The first public bath and laundry, a one-
story structure made of concrete, was built in
1913. This meticulous domestic surveillance
and socio-spatial regimentation was driven to
effectively cordon off the contamination dis-
charged by native bodies and prevent it from
spreading to a larger area of the city.
Establishment of Sanitary Barrios
As a form of compromise, the pathogenic
neighborhoods slowly gave way to the Sanitary
Barrios where the new domestic prototype, a
hybridized form of nipa house known as the
“Sanitary Model House,” was mass-manufac-
tured for the plebian class. The building of
these model communities marked the shift of
American urban policy, which recast the image
of the colonial authorities before the eyes of the
Filipinos from ruthless demolisher and arsonist
of indigenous neighborhoods to altruistic com-
munity developer and urban benefactor.
Lay-out of a typical Sanitary Barrio, neighborhood plan advocated by the Bureau of Health
To abate overcrowding, filth, bad ventilation
and the threat of fire in light-material districts,
the Americans introduced in 1908 the neigh-
borhood concept known as Sanitary Barrios
which permitted nipa houses to be built on
highly regulated blocks of subdivided lots. Each
sanitary block had a built-in system of surface
drainage, public latrine, public bath houses
and laundry, and public water hydrants, which
could be availed by the residents free of charge.
Imprints of these barrios could still be seen in 123
areas of Sampaloc, San Lazaro, and Vito Cruz.
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
The sanitary barrios followed a general template
which was made up of a system of permanent
street lines or city blocks laid out according to
the regulated street plans of the municipality.
(see plan and perspective of a typical sanitary
barrio) The unit of the sanitary barrio was the
sanitary block, defined by wide streets possess-
ing a gradient that allowed for efficient surface
124
Perspective of a Sanitary Barrio, 1912
drainage. These blocks were then partitioned
into uniformly sized house lots. Every lot was
so oriented in a manner that each had a street
or alleyway frontage. Only a single house was
allowed for each lot. (Department of Interior
1912, 12) Each sanitary block had a built-in
system of surface drainage, a public latrine,
public bath houses and laundry, and public
water hydrants, which could be availed of by
the residents free of charge. Blocks were cut by
alleys to shorten the distance and travel time
from the house to the public convenience sta-
tion and hydrant.
The San Lazaro Estate, owned by the Insular
Government and administered by the Bureau
of Lands, was the first area in the metropolis
to be developed as a sanitary barrio. This was
begun in October 1908 with an experimental
appropriation of P5,000 and at the sum of
P34,117.82. The San Lazaro sanitary barrio in
the Santa Cruz district, consisted of 45 blocks
subdivided into 1,648 lots, with provisions for
a population of 13,184 went into operation by
the middle of 1910. (Report of the Bureau of
Health 1910, 11) This was immediately fol-
lowed by the completion of the Legarda sanitary
barrio in Sampaloc district in September of the
same year. The actual construction and super-
vision of these sanitary barrios were entrusted
to the Manila’s Department of Engineering and
Public Works. (Annual Report of the Municipal
Board of Manila 1910, 29). The expenditures
for developing these hygienic villages were
shouldered by the municipal government,
which appropriated the sum of 206,784.77 via
Ordinance No. 138, “An Ordinance Making Ap-
propriation of Funds for Expenditure in Making
Sanitary Improvements in the City Of Manila,”
passed on 18 April 1910.
It appeared that the sanitary barrio was a
source of great civic pride, attested to by an
overwhelming patronage from donors who of-
fered portions of their estate to the municipal
government to be developed along its reformist
template. In 1910, the year of its completion,
lands were offered on several occasions. An
offer to donate all land required for street pur-
poses in Paco adjacent to the proposed exten-
tions of Calle Canonigo was expressed by Mr. H.
M. Pitt, of Chandler & Pitt, real estate agents.
Another offer was from Don Tomas Cabangis,
of 209 Ylaya, Tondo, who offered half of a large
tract of marsh land in the Barrio de Vitas, on
the condition that the municipality would fill
the entire tract from a proposed dredging of 125
the Vitas channel. On 26 May 1910, the City
Engineer forwarded a letter stating that he

R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
was informed verbally by Attorney Joseph N.
Wolfson, who represented the International
Bank, that his clients were ready to consider a
proposition to open up the property belonging
to the bank, adjacent to the Santa Monica ex-
tension, by surrendering the necessary land for
street purposes to the municipality. The offer of
Messrs. Chandle & Pitt was to use as a sanitary
barrio the property known as the Pasay race
track, which was situated just outside of the
city limits of Manila, on Calle Real, Pasay. On
15 June 1910, a communication was sent to
Maj. Thomas L. Hartigan, counsel to the arch-
diocese of Manila, in which information was
requested with regard to the opening of certain
streets on Singalong to facilitate the develop-
ment of San Andres in the Malate district. The
former conceded to the request. (Report of the
Bureau of Health 1910, 110)

Development of the Tsalet

With the success of the sanitary barrios, the
American authorities focused their efforts to
modernize the Filipino house. Vernacular dwell-
ings – its materials, layout, construction and
services – posed a myriad of health issues
threatening to perturb the colonial sanitary
order. Inadequate air quality, potable water
and waste disposal adversely affect the medi-
cal condition of its occupants. The ineffective
drainage of surface water and the inadequate
treatment of human feces before they con-
taminate the underground water sources were
New housing types drawn and promoted by the Bureau of Health, 1912
 crucial aspects in the prevention of cholera, ty-
phoid fever, dysentery and other enteric diseas-
es. For the colonizers, the city should be made
up of houses of more permanent constitution
such as stone or concrete: the vernacular nipa
dwellings were appropriate in the countryside
and not in the city. This architectural defama-
tion of vernacular dwellings was the consistent
trope in the colonial discourse: stone and con-
crete was equated with permanence, affluence,
126 and civilization, while houses of nipa and bam-
boo gave shelters to “savages” and “unsanitary
ignorant natives.” The colonial abhorrence for
the materiality of nipa houses was aggravated
even further in the aftermath of two epidemics
to a point of expunging its presence in the urban
core by effecting a sweeping municipal legisla-
tion. These building regulations were to intro-
duce architectonic strategies to revolutionize its
form according to American sanitary designs.
The pinnacle of the official action of the Insular
government to discourage the use of nipa and
eventually diminish its staple status in native
building practice was epitomized by the pas-
sage in the Philippine Assembly Act No. 1838,
“Act Granting a Prize of Fifteen Thousand Pe-
sos to the Inventor of an Incombustible Roof to
Substitute Nipa, and Creating a Technical Board
to Pass Upon the Conditions of the Invention”,
on 29 May 1908. New materials were to be
developed to replace the highly-flammable nipa
as the staple material for urban construction,
especially after the Great Fire that engulfed Ma-
nila in 1903. Effectively, Philippine Assembly
Tsalet built by the Americans in early 1900
Act no. 1838 sanctioned the banishment of the
nipa roof with the invention of incombustible
material as substitute. The pinnacle of this ma-
terial experimentation was the development of
the prototype “Ideal Sanitary House” displayed
at the Manila Carnival of 1917.
The colonial architects and sanitary engineers
successfully evolved a new kind of domestic ar-
chitecture. In the quest for a sanitary domestic
architecture, the Americans, following what the
British did for the Indian bungalow, success-
fully developed a new kind of architecture that
crossbred the tropically-responsive features of
vernacular buildings with modern materials and
imported hygienic architectonic principles that
gave premium to “light, ventilation and drain-
age.” (Department of the Interior 1912, 3) This
innovative hybrid house, hinting stylistically at
a tropicalized chalet, would be simply called
the tsalet by the Filipinos and would influence
the domestic aspirations of the Filipino middle
class beginning in 1910s and continuing even
after the Pacific war. It was a single storey
structure constructed of either entirely of wood
or a combination ferroconcrete and wood. The
living areas were maintained at an elevation a
meter above ground, lower than the bahay kubo
to discourage the placement of domestic ani-
mals in the underfloor area. The extended porch
or veranda in front, which could be accessed by
either an L-shaped or a T-shaped stair, was an-
other improvement. These deep verandas and
covered balconies were essential architectural
Tsalet built in 1925

Plan for “Ideal Sanitary Model House,” the prototype of which was built for the 1917 Manila Carnival
features borrowed from to early sanatorium de-
sign to harness curative effects of fresh air, a
well-known treatment for tuberculosis prior to
the introduction of triple-drug therapy (Camp-
bell 2005, 465). Unlike the bahay kubo, the
interior space was defined by wall partitions
which divided it into rooms. The bedrooms
were laid out on a row on one side perpendicu-
lar to the front, living and dining rooms and the
kitchen were laid out on the other. The medi-
cal doctrine that air-borne bacillus was most
transmissible in enclosed space empowered
the revision of Filipino interior domestic space
into separate room compartments to isolate the
possible contagion if a household member fell
ill. In addition, the spatial arrangement of the
rooms were in such a way that all rooms receive
127
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
natural light and ventilation through its large
windows and ventanillas and took advantage of
the disinfecting effect and regenerative beams
of solar exposure.
In 1912, the Bureau of Health drew up the
plans for sanitary habitations reiterating the
tsalet prototype. These plans, drafted George
H. Guerdrum, chief of the Division of Sanitary
Engineering, were disseminated to the public
via Health Bulletin No. 10, Philippine Habita-
tions (Viviendas Filipinas), written in English
and Spanish, “instructing architects, builders,
house owners, and occupants of houses in the
few simple principles of sanitary house con-
struction.” (Department of the Interior 1912, 3)
Schemes were drawn for the general types of
128
The “Ideal Sanitary Model House” built as an exhibit for the 1917 Manila Carnival
urban house: single detached, semi-detached
(duplex), and row house apartments (accesso-
ria).
Sanctions in the Use of
Public Urban Space
As the laying of streets and development of
new park and leisure spaces in Manila pro-
gressed, new ordinances were formulated by
the Municipal government to regulate these
newly created public sites into a highly ordered
colonial space – a controlled landscape shield-
ed from potentially disruptive social forces. A
Foucauldian regime of normalization, whereby
potential disruptions were pinned down and
evicted from the public domain, was strictly
enforced by the municipal police force. This
form of control was invisible as the rules were
to be embodied in the everyday practices and
encoded the habitus of the place. Social unrest
and disturbances, deviant behaviors, criminal-
ity, vagrancy, prostitution, mendicancy, and
unsanitary customs were thoroughly expunged
from public premises by imposing standards of
acceptable behavior and permissible activities
in the public streets and spaces. The municipal
proconsuls increasingly appropriated the role
of custodian of the public arena, anointing
upon themselves the rights and responsibili-
ties of organizing, maintaining, and regulating
spaces deemed public – such as streets, thor-
oughfares, parks, canals, plazas, open spaces,
halls, markets and slaughterhouses. By sustain-
ing an urban environment with homogenous,
well demarcated public spaces, the colonial
authorities hoped to influence the behavior of
the indigenous communities in the public arena
towards order and propriety. (Yeoh 1996, 243)
Those practices and activities which failed to
comply with municipal standards of good order
and public appropriateness became encoded
in the aggregation of municipal legislation and
subject to disciplinary sanctions by the police
and municipal courts. To do this, the bounda-
ries of public space and the distinction between
public and private were explicitly defined by the
authorities. They identified appropriate forms
of public activity as opposed to use of public
space for restricted functions.
On 1 July 1901, by command of Brigadier Gen-
eral Davis, Provost Marshal General, Ordinance
No. 11 or “An Ordinance Relating to the Use of
Public Streets and Public Places of Manila” was
promulgated. The ordinance banned any person
from begging, cooking, washing clothes, horses,
vehicles or other property, throwing garbage,
offal, refuse or sweepings, or committing any
nuisance in the public streets. It criminalized
any unauthorized person who carried a weapon
of any kind, or fire the same, or any torpedo,
firecracker or other explosive in the public
street. The law also regulated the obstruction
of streets by vehicles to ensure the continuous
flow of vehicles or pedestrians; prohibited any
horse or other animal from standing or being
driven upon a public sidewalk or crossing; crim-
inalized any coolie or bearer who occupied side-
walks in pursuit his calling; forbade the traffic
of corpses or any dead animal, swine, garbage,
rubbish, offal, or offensive material of any de-
scription, or any explosives or inflammable ma-
terial through the public streets, except in vehi-
cles licensed for such purposes; and prohibited
the use of public streets, alleys or avenues for
racing of horses or other animals for the pur-
pose of deciding any stake, bet or challenge.
The ordinance declared it unlawful for any per-
son to lay pipes or conduits of any kind, or to
dig or remove any earth or stone from a street,
sidewalk or public place; to place or erect any
post, fence, stand, building or other obstruc-
tion, in whole or in part, upon a street, sidewalk
or public way, or to obstruct any street, drain or
gutter; and, to deposit any sand, dirt, garbage,
rubbish, offal or material of ally description in
any street, estero or public way, or to grade, fill
or repave any part of the public street, without
first obtaining a permit from the Department of
Streets, Parks, Fire and Sanitation. Anyone who
removed, defaced or in any way interfered with
any telegraph, telephone, fire alarm or electric
light poles or wires, or any property which had
been placed in the streets for the convenience
and safety of the public, could be arrested. To
sell or expose for sale in a public street or public
place, any vehicle or any horse or other animal,
or any goods, wares or merchandise of any de-
scription; to conduct a parade of menagerie and
circus in the in the streets; and, to cut, break
or carry away any tree, shrub or flower grow-
ing in any street or public place, or to deface,
injure or remove any authorized obstruction, or 129
public property of any description was decreed
illegal unless issued with a permit from Provost
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
Marshal General.
Among the ordinances promulgated by civil gov-
ernment of Manila in its first year of existence
that sanctioned the conduct of use of public
urban space were Ordinance No. 21 (An ordi-
nance prohibiting the practice of cleaning ears,
scraping eyelids or barbering on the streets,
lanes, alleys and public squares), Ordinance No.
27 (An ordinance relating to vagrants, including
mendicants, gamblers, and prostitutes, and pro-
viding for the punishment thereof), Ordinance
No. 28 (An ordinance relating to breaches of
the peace and disorderly conduct, intoxica-
tion, obstructing and misusing public streets
and places, and other acts that arc injurious to
persons and property), and Ordinance No. 31
(An ordinance establishing the city pound and
the impounding animals running at large in the
streets of Manila).
Under the provisions of Ordinance No. 21,
it was unlawful for any person or persons to
engage in the business of cleaning the ears,
scraping the eyelids or barbering upon any
street, lane, alley, or public square in the city
of Manila. This was specifically enacted to put a
stop to the unsanitary practice of itinerant Chi-
nese barbers of conducting their profession in
the open air. The offender was either fined (not
more than $25) or imprisoned (for ten days),
or both.
 The Municipal Board sought via Ordinance
No.28 to curtail potential social ruptures – ur-
ban violence and destabilizing forces – endan-
gering the colonial stasis. It states that “no
person shall make, aid, countenance, or assist
in making any riot, affray, disorder, disturbance,
or breach of the peace; or assault, beat, or use
personal violence upon another without just
cause in any public place; or utter any slan-
derous, threatening, or abusive language or
130 expression; or exhibit or display any emblem,
transparency, representation, motto, language,
device, instrument, or thing; or do any act, in
any public place, meeting, or procession, tend-
ing to disturb the peace or excite a riot; or col-
lect with other persons in a body or crowd for
any unlawful purpose; or disturb or disquiet any
congregation engaged in any lawful assembly.”
The ordinance empowered the municipal police
to arrest persons who are “drunk or intoxicated,
or behave in a drunken, boisterous, rude, or
indecent manner in any public place, or place
open to public view.” It made clear that “no per-
son shall play or participate in any game of ball,
Street barbering or fly any kite in any public street or place; or
play, or participate in any game, sport, or ex-
ercise, or indulge in any conduct in any public
street or place, having a tendency to obstruct
such public street or place, or to annoy per-
sons or frighten animals passing or being upon
such public street or place, or upon adjacent
premises.” Those who “throw or cast any stone
or other missile from or into any public street
or place” were detained. To abate the native
practice of throwing the contents of chamber
pots indiscriminately into the streets the ordi-
nance provided that “no person shall throw or
deposit water or other liquid in any public street
or place, except in gutters or conduits provided
for that purpose.” Vandals who “wrongfully cut,
mark, deface, obstruct, or injure any tree, grass,
shrub, street walk, gutter, sewer, drain, culvert,
water pipe, hydrant, building, fence, wall, or
other property,” like the other violators of this
ordinance, were slapped with a fine of not
more than $100 or imprisonment not to exceed
Outdoor cooking

Ordinance no. 27 sought to control vagrancy in the urban spaces
six months, with or without hard labor on the
public streets or elsewhere, or both, for each
offense. (Report of the Philippine Commission
1902, 1213-14)
Ordinance no. 27 explicitly defined a vagrant
as “any person who, having no visible means
of support, lives without lawful employment;
or who keeps a house of public gambling or
gaming; or of prostitution; or who is a com-
mon gambler or prostitute; or who, for the most
part, maintains himself by gambling or begging;
or who habitually idly loiters about, or wan-
ders abroad, visiting or staying about hotels,
cafes, drinking-saloons, houses of ill repute,
gambling houses, railroad depots, wharves,
public waiting-rooms, or parks; or who lodges
in outhouses, hallways, market-places, sheds,
stables, unoccupied houses, lumber yards, or in
the open air, not giving a good account of him-
self; or who habitually accompanies prostitutes
or other persons of notoriously bad repute; or
who wanders abroad and begs or places him-
131
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
self in the streets or other public places to beg
by look, word, or sign, or to receive alms; or
who, being diseased, maimed, or deformed
so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object
exhibits himself in a public street or place; or
who is found in or upon any dwelling house,
warehouse, coach-house, stable, or outhouse,
or in any enclosed yard, garden, or area, for
any unlawful purpose.”(Report of the Philippine
Commission 1902, 1213) Convicted vagrants
were punished by fine not more than $100 or
imprisonment not exceeding six months, with
or without hard labor, on the streets or else-
where, or both, for each offense.
From August 1901 to September 1902, the po-
lice authorities, enforcing the above ordinances
made the following arrests and convictions: 17
for violating the barber regulation; 8 for clean-
ing ears on public streets; 10 for begging; 678
for blocking the highway; 10 for blocking the
sidewalks; 32 for blocking the waterway; 98 for
conducting gambling house; 26 for cockfighting
 on public streets; 22 coolies for occupying the
sidewalk; 518 for committing public nuisance;
2 for conducting a house of prostitution; 402
drunks; 943 disorderly drunks; 2,219 for dis-
orderly conduct; 6 for defacing public property;
2,492 for gambling; 91 for indecent exposure;
30 prostitutes; 5 for trafficking girls for prosti-
tution; 265 for peddling without license; and, 6
for selling opium to natives. (Report of the Phil-
ippine Commission 1902, 117) The statistics
showed the high rate of success of the police
132
for in maintaining order in the streets and pub-
lic places.
The anti-vagrant ordinance, enacted on 18 May
1902, was reinforced by a duplicate law, the
Philippine Commission Act No. 519 (An Act
Defining Vagrancy and for Punishment Thereof)
issued on 12 November 1902, applied for the
entire insular territory. Both laws aimed singu-
larly to expunge from the urban precincts the
“unsightly creatures” loitering the streets of
Manila for these undesirables bodies – of pros-
titutes, gamblers, drunkards, beggars, home-
less, diseased and disfigured – marred the im-
perial urban image that the colonial authorities
painstakingly cultivated.
To the dismay of the colonial authorities, the
strictness of the anti-vagrancy law made life
more comfortable for those who were detained.
The municipality ended up pampering native
light offenders and vagrants with comfortable
accommodations and idleness of prison life, so
authorities devised a way to decongest the jails
by using whips of rattan and employing convict
labor for the city’s infrastructural and street-
building program. The Municipal Board noted:
…many convictions have been obtained under
the strong vagrancy ordinance. The population
of Manila is largely made up of a class of peo-
ple which is ignorant of the law and unfamiliar
with progress and it is a difficult matter to make
known the ordinances… To the lower class of
Filipinos the idea of a few weeks or months
in jail holds out no particular fear. Beyond the
limited degree of disgrace, they suffer nothing
of a particular harsh punishment, being merely
required to pass the time without liberty, but
nevertheless enjoying good meals and healthy
quarters and plenty of time for sleep and rest,
which last appeals most strongly. It is believed
that in a majority of light offenses and espe-
cially in the case of numerous small infractions
such as fighting on the street and petty thiev-
ing and abuse of public places, that a proper
administering of the rattan would be far more
effective and expedient, as it would obviate the
necessity of loading up the jails with people
who are unable or unwilling to pay the small
fines imposed in the courts. Instead of a period
of idleness, they could be well placed at some
useful occupation, and the Board has under
consideration a plan for employing prisoners,
of long terms involving hard labor, at the quar-
ries or on the outside roads of the municipal-
ity. (Report of the Municipal Board of Manila
1902, 50)
This revision in the policy worked to convert the
idle vagrants and misdemeanants to supply the
labor needed for the infrastructural program of
the city, particularly street building. Under this
mode of infrastructural production, the worth-
less colonial subjects were transformed into
productive convict laborers – a reformative pro-
cess which prepared them for social reintegra-
tion.
With the same zeal of enforcing medical hy-
giene, the maintenance of the so-called “social
hygiene” in the public realm was strictly imple-
mented. Social hygiene encompasses “not only
the campaign against venereal disease and the
suppression of prostitution, but also the study
of other social conditions…in relation to vice
and immorality.”(Macaraig 1929, 148) This
municipal mandate empowered the Municipal
Board to legislate ordinances providing “for the
suppression of houses of ill-fame and other dis-
orderly houses, gambling-houses, gambling and
all fraudulent devices for the purpose of gain
and obtaining money or property.” (Ibid.) As
early as 1907, brothels concealed as lodging

Makeshift street cafe in the 1900s
houses flourished in Gardenia Street in Sam-
paloc, an area predestined to become Manila’s
infamous red-light district during the American
period. The Municipal Board allowed the li-
censing of these lodging houses and to protect
Board from censure, no records of the red-light
district as such were made available in any pub-
lic document. The Gardenia district flourished
for a decade as no law in the Philippines existed
directly making prostitution a crime except in
a mention in the vagrancy ordinance. On the
midnight of 25 October 1918, after a long and
protracted struggle, Gardenia’s ill reputation
was wiped clean. That night Mayor Justo Luk-
ban, a devout Methodist, and the Manila police
force rounded up every prostitute in the district,
without giving these women the opportunity to
collect their belongings and with no knowledge
that they were to be expelled from Manila.
Some 170 women were hustled into patrol
wagons, carried them to a waiting steamer and
deported to an unknown life in Davao. Such
133
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
methods of brute force which the municipal
authorities used to expunge Manila’s notoriety
in flesh trade overnight was reprobated by the
Supreme Court resulting in a landmark case in
Philippine jurisprudence, upholding the funda-
mental rights of colonial sex workers. (see G.R.
No. L-14639, 25 March 1919, Zacarias Villavi-
cencio, et al. vs. Justo Lukban, et al.)
Urban Aesthetics:
Making Manila Beautiful
The field of vision of this domestic sanitary sur-
veillance soon expanded its coverage to include
the larger public environment, propelling a sys-
temic urbanistic change that converged both in
civic design and public policy. Since colonialism
was primarily about economic gain, the urban
landscape was radically transformed in order
to yield the greater profit. The urban makeover
germinated from the philosophy of City Beau-
tiful planning whose fundamental basis pro-
fessed that physical beautification of the city
134
Daniel H. Burnham
and the dispensation of urban aesthetics would
breathe new life to Manila’s presumed diseased
urban condition and bring instant social recu-
peration as well. The clarity and cleanliness of
the public environment were crucial in repre-
senting the image of Manila, especially to for-
eigners and capitalist, as one which engendered
civic pride and municipal vivacity.
Behind the façade, the imperial iconography
and colonial modernity that the Burnham plan—
designed by the foremost Beaux Art American
architect Daniel A. Burnham in 1905 — sought
to erect in Manila was an urban “cure” con-
ceived in the language of geometry, function,
hierarchy and pathology and driven to regular-
ize the colonial space and facilitate the orderly
arrangement of native bodies within that space.
The cleared sites of pathology provided an
empty anachronistic space where ceremonial
straight avenues, right angles, and functional
zoning prescribed by the City Beautiful mas-
ter plan of Daniel H. Burnham were to be laid
and made available for imperial place-making.
Burnham at work in his office
Burnham recommended detailed urban proce-
dures: the development of the waterfront and
the location of parks, playfields and parkways
so as to promote sufficient opportunities for ur-
ban recreation to every quarter in the city; the
establishment of a street system, which would
establish direct and convenient communication
from every part of the city, to every other sector
or district; the zoning of building sites for vari-
ous functions, the development of waterways
or esteros for transportation; the provision of
summer resorts within an accessible distance
from the city. It had a central civic core; radials
emanating from this core were laid over a gridi-
ron pattern and large parks interconnected by
parkways. The centerpiece of the Burnham Plan
was the civic core where a grand concourse
emanated from the bay and terminated in arc
further inland. Here Burnham envisioned a na-
tional capitol complex where colonnaded build-
ings were formally arranged around a rectangu-
lar plaza. Radiating from this civic core was a
series of tree-lined boulevards superimposed on
an efficient gridiron street system.
The shift from invasive domestic surveillance
to public environmental regularization was also
signaled by a huge capital investment poured
by the colonial officials to install infrastruc-
tural networks of urban modernity – such as
a piped water system, a sewer system, streets
and bridges, electricity, a transit system, a tele-
phone system. The rationality of technocosmo-
politanist logic governed this quest for a means
to rehabilitate the diseased and disorderly body
of Manila and maneuver urban life closer to an
image of the metropole as paragon of colonial
modernity.
In the pursuit of colonial modernity and scien-
tific progress, it was necessary to install and
overlay the City Beautiful master plan with
technological systems such as piped water,
sewage, and electricity, transportation network
and public infrastructure. These technologies
were not merely a material element in the pro-
duction of the urban image of a rapidly-advanc-
Burnham Plan for the Redevelopment of Manila, 1905
ing American imperial city, but also constituted
a critical dimension to the social production of
space, implying connectivities between the na-
tive body and the city, between the social and
bio-physical systems, and between the invisible
and visible aspects of the urban space. For in-
stance, the hydrological transformation of the
city represented by the synchronic construction
of a modern sewer system and piped water dis-
tribution system in Manila was both a process
of physical reconstruction and social engineer- 135
ing within a modernizing city, marked from
the very beginning by a tension between the
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
punitive and progressive hygienist discourses.
The evolution of modern technological systems
could thus be conceived in Foucauldian terms
as part of a biopolitical dynamics wherein social
relations and codes of bodily conduct were in-
creasingly subjected to indirect modes of social
disciplines and managerial techniques of colo-
nial urban governance (Foucault 1977).
 It was at this juncture that urbanism and ar-
chitecture replaced physical force and coercive
strategies with rituals of civility and governmen-
tality to solicit native obedience to the colonial
state. The styling of architecture paralleled the
styling of native discipline. The Philippine Com-
mission created the Bureau of Engineering and
Construction of Public Works and the Bureau of
Architecture and Construction of Public Build-
ings to oversee the production of colonial in-
136
Bureau of Architecture
Government Laboratory by Edgar Bourne
frastructures and architecture. Through these
agencies, which later merged as the Bureau of
Public Works or the BPW, the American regime
deployed its resources to build public architec-
ture such as markets, slaughterhouses, power
plants, crematories, fire stations, public toilets
and baths, prisons, ports, bridges, roads, public
parks, transit stations, hospitals and asylums,
scientific buildings and laboratories, exposition
grounds, schools, official residences, and capi-

Customs House by Edgar Bourne
tol buildings. It was also within the institutional
framework of the BPW that Filipino pioneer
architects would receive their architectural tu-
telage.
As the sanitary transformation of Manila
went into high gear, Insular Architect Edgar K.
Bourne, chief of the Bureau of Architecture, de-
signed set-piece architecture that mimicked the
styles of Spanish colonial buildings – the Span-
ish Mission Revival. The curvilinear parapets,
round arched entrances, white plastered walls,
pyramidal terracotta tiled roofs, and dominant
mirador towers were architectural elements
transplanted from the American Southwest,
which adorned the early architecture of Ameri-
can rule.
For the implementation of Burnham’s urban
directives, Beaux Arts-trained William Parsons
came into the picture. He was appointed Con-
sulting Architect, a new position created to re-
place that of Insular Architect. Parsons served
as the longest consulting architect of the BPW
from 1905 to 1914. During his tenure, he was
responsible for the design of all the public
buildings and parks for the entire colony.
137
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
Under the guidance of the master plan, neo-
classical monumental structures slowly rose in
the landscape, working to enhance the imperial
image, colonial commerce and native discipline.
The plan also stimulated the adoption of Beaux
Arts as the official style of the colony for the
next three decades. Neoclassical capitol build-
ings, the embodiment of the American republi-
can ideals, also rose in every provincial urban
center. And it was through this style that the
processes of democratic apprenticeship were
made more tangible in modern reinforced con-
crete buildings sponsored by the colonial state.
Parsons followed Burnham’s advice to learn
from the extant Philippine-Spanish sources and
consciously orchestrated the fusion of locally
derived architectural forms and the neoclassi-
cal idiom to dramatize the encounter between
and co-existence of two cultures. The extensive
appropriation of familiar local motifs made co-
lonialism appear as a civilizing continuity rather
than a disruption of native civilization.
Parsons’ contribution to local architecture
and building technology was the improvement
of the quality of construction materials and
 technique. Of course, this was achieved with
the importation of building technologies from
the United States such as reinforced concrete,
concrete hollow blocks, and the Kahn Truss
System. Perhaps, the most pervasive legacy of
Parsons, which lent itself to mass-reproduction,
was the standardization of building types and
plans for schoolhouses, markets, tiendas, and
municipal buildings.
138 Aside from Parsons, there were other Ameri-
can architects like George Fenhagen and Ralph
Doane at BPW who contributed to the propaga-
tion of neoclassicism both in government and
private practice. The influx of American capital
and assimilation of the new culture allowed
new building types to flourish.
Apart from receiving technical training from the
offices of BPW, deserving Filipinos who aspired
Paco Train Station
Parsons Fenhagen Doane
to be architects were given scholarships by
the government under the pensionado system.
Launched in 1903, the system allowed Filipino
students to pursue university education in the
United States. Upon graduation they were ab-
sorbed into the colonial bureaucracy as high-
profile civil servants. Majority of pensionado ar-
chitects received their academic training in the
American East Coast, the bastion of Beaux Arts
pedagogy. Upon their return, the pensionado
architects were employed at the Division of Ar-
chitecture of the BPW. Their homecoming also
propelled the establishment of architectural
schools, where they were recruited as members
of the faculty and consultants. Their influence
both in education and practice signaled the
remarkable surge in the number of structures
in the neoclassical style, more ornate than the
works of Parsons. When Parsons left the Bu-
reau, the pensionados gradually took over its
Works of Parsons in the Philippines featured in May 1919 issue
of Architecture Review

University Hall of the University of the Philippines designed by William E. Parsons
key positions as the government launched its
Filipinization policy as authorized by the Jones
Law in 1916. The pensionado system, of which
Juan Arellano was a distinguished product, was
indeed in keeping with the American pledge
to train the natives in self-government and at
the same time ensured the perpetuation of the
Beaux Arts system manifested in the continu-
ous production of neoclassic reinforced con-
crete buildings even after the bureaucracy of
architectural production had been turned over
to Filipinos.
The monumental neoclassical edifices existed
in a spatial logic in which imperialist time
dwelled, where hybrid forms emerged from the
tumult of cultural encounter and exchange. The
manufacture of colonial architecture under the
American regime was motivated by a hybridic
framework, which consciously appropriated
and integrated locally-derived building motifs.
This appropriation of local motifs was rendered
safely within the bounds of neoclassicism to
generate a genius loci that visibly expressed
139
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
flexibility and accommodation of cultural differ-
ences as well as the respect for the indigenous
architectural knowledge.
This gesture of architectural associationism is
an exercise which avoided the outright assimi-
lation of colonized people into Euro-American
civilization; ensuring the native consensus and
legitimation of the colonial state apparatus.
Rather than impose an foreign architectural
style, the technique necessitated the blend-
ing of classicist (even modernistic) forms with
traditional building elements. The grafting of
capiz windows, ventanillas, calados, precast
ornaments evoking tropical flora and fauna,
classical statuary clad in native clothing and
adornment in the neoclassical building massing
as demonstrated were not only visual indices
of attempts at cultural sensitivity played out by
the colonial architects but also an imperialist
non-invasive strategy to project aesthetic rec-
onciliation and unproblematic coexistence of
indigenous and American in a lived space born
from a tumult of miscegenation. This appro-
140 Dormitory at the Philippine Normal School
Sala of the dormitory of the Philippine Normal School
priation of local motifs was used safely within
the neoclassical principles to produce a sense
of place that visually communicated flexibil-
ity and accommodation of cultural differences,
and above all, respect for the indigenous ar-
chitectural knowledge, yet colonial control and
domination effectively operated covertly. This
encounter, as Gwendolyn Wright (1991, 113)
expressed, produced “a complex semiology of
architectural messages – a certain respect and
knowledge of the other, but still a clear domi-
nance of the West.”
The result was a kind of architectural style that
is neither indigenous nor American but a hy-
brid style. The hybrid was one of colonialism’s
illegitimate offspring, the product of cross-
breeding between the metropolitan and the
colonial. (Morton 1998, 83) The consequence
of hybridization was the erasure and blurring
of boundaries between stylistic appearances
and the dissolution of codes of difference es-
tablished by colonialism. The hybridization of
Tondo Fire Station
Paco Market
architectural forms as a consequence of the
colonial building program could be linked to
Homi Bhabha’s postcolonial concept of the hy-
brid, which “terrorizes authority with the ruse
of recognition, its mimicry, its mockery.” (1986,
176) The paradox of stylistic crossbreeding is
that colonial practices produced hybrids even
while repudiating them because of its potential
to dissolve racial boundaries and perpetuate
impure images. Yet it enabled them to better
see, control, and hold their colonial subjects
through the mastery of nostalgic images of
nativism and the representation of the regime’s
alleged benevolence and philanthropic purpose
in the colonial built forms. It is in this capacity
that architecture was overwhelmingly political.
Architectural representation and images were
processed to enable the colonizing power to
nurture an iconic metanarratives and consoli-
date the plural identities and loyalties of the
natives in a collective identity constructed and
sanctioned by the colonial state by the melding
of native and metropolitan.
Zonification of Manila
Zoning is a regulatory mechanism imposed by
a municipality that delineates through legisla-
tion the use of land located within its corporate
limits and specifies the kind of buildings and
structures located thereon. A comprehensive
zoning ordinance calls for the partitioning of
urban space into districts and the prescription
and application of different regulations in each
district having to do with the architectural de-
sign of structures, the area to be occupied by 141
them, and the use to which the property may be
devoted. The use of a building may be restricted

R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
to that of trade, industry or residence. Legisla-
tion of zoning was enacted in the exercise of the
state’s policing power over the urban landscape
that went beyond the mere suppression of the
urban nuisance and offensive use of property
but was consequential in the promulgation of
hygienic reform and the City Beautiful agenda
in Manila. For example, noxious businesses
were excluded or entirely prohibited in certain
districts. There were restrictions on the opera-
tion and location of tenements, the erection of
billboards, the discharge of smoke, and in some
residential areas there were restrictions on lot
size, setbacks and the mass, type and height Proposed Government Center in Luneta
of structures. Many of these regulations were
upheld by the courts since the police power of
municipality was determined to be sufficiently
broad to include within its scope new laws af-
fecting the use and development of land, par-
ticularly those uses which were deemed harm-
ful to the public health, safety, morals and the
general welfare. The dialectics of spatial func-
tion and social transaction within the context of
modernizing colonial project was epitomized by Model of the National Capitol Buildings in Luneta
Timothy Mitchell, who affirmed:

The precise specification of space and function
that characterise modern institutions, the co-
ordination of these functions into hierarchical
arrangements, the organisation of supervision
and surveillance, the marking out of time into
schedules and programmes—all contribute to
constructing a world that appears to consist
not of a complex of social practices but of a
binary order: on the one hand individuals and
their activities, on the other an inert structure
that somehow stands apart from individuals,
preexists them, and contains and gives a frame-
work to their lives. Such techniques have given
rise to the peculiar metaphysic of modernity,
 where the world seems resolved into the two-
dimensional form of individual versus appara-
tus, practice versus institution, social life and its
structure – or material reality and its meaning.
(1988, xii)
Zonification was the key element in the spatial
reversionary process of enframing, a concept
of spatial reassignment which Timothy Mitchell
described as a “method of dividing and contain-
142 ing” the space as geometrical units to efficiently
control the entire colonial society at a micro-
physical level. This kind of spatial technique
was mobilized to render the colonial society
“picture-like and legible” and hence “available
to political and economic calculation.” (Mitchell
1988, 33) Burnham’s plan for Manila accom-
modated the uniform grids which formed the
rigid blocks of the Sanitary Barrios, an appa-
ratus of ostensible enframing. The random ag-
glomeration of nipa houses were brought under
control, first by demolition, then by reorganizing
them rigidly in new settlement sites (sanitary
barrio) with regularized blocks defining a grid
street system and individual lots of similar and
precise dimensions. In this way, a fundamental
unit of micro-physical surveillance was estab-
lished and such method of order which “offered
the possibility of a remarkable standardization,
between houses, between families and between
villages” (Mitchell 1988, 45) to effectively cod-
ify a visible spatial hierarchy. This new mode of
authority digressed from militaristic inflictions
to covertly operate in the guise of a highly ra-
tionalized space that was programmed to con-
trol bodies inhabiting that space through the
panoptic principles of physical confinement,
the continuous monitoring of behaviors and the
construction of hierarchies.
The dichotomous zoning system that easily de-
lineated the city by a fire line was no longer
compatible with Manila’s urban metamorphosis
as industrialization took its toll. The census of
1903, a year after the municipality promulgat-
ed the urban dichotomy, revealed the presence
of 876 industrial establishments in the city. By
the second decade of the century these indus-
trial and manufacturing plants would reach the
2,000 mark, indiscriminately distributed and
located throughout Manila. (Macaraig 1929,
355) The proliferation of industrial facilities, a
result of the colonial economy geared primarily
towards the processing of agricultural raw ma-
terials for export, caused much annoyance to
districts predominated by residences. The dust,
noise, smoke and the other pollutants released
by “breweries, cigarettes, oil and soap facto-
ries were a menace to public health,” while the
“presence of garages and stables by the score in
some of the residential thoroughfares destroyed
the beauty of the city streets and hinders the
development of a respectable community.”
(Ibid.) Serafin Macaraig in 1927, remarked the
following regarding the unregulated urban jum-
ble of functions in the city of Manila as a major
hindrance in the execution of the Burnham Plan
and called for the urgent passage of a zoning
ordinance:
The Burnham layout of the streets is beautiful,
but it is the belief of many civic-spirited citi-
zens that, unless a zonification law is enacted,
the beautiful boulevards and streets and open
spaces for recreation laid out by the Burnham
Plan will within ten years hence be hedged in by
factories with towering smoke-stacks polluting
the atmosphere of our neighborhood; brewer-
ies, soap and oil factories housed in uncouth
buildings; while small industries of an unpleas-
ant nature in dilapidated and worn-out build-
ings will continue to invade our respectable
neighborhood. They are considered the most
destructive social forces for they hinder the
proper development of a comfortable neigh-
borhood and the beautification of the City. It
is averred that it will be difficult to do so after
six or seven thousand factories have been in-
discriminately scattered all over the City. It is
never premature to look into the future, but it
is a crime against future generations if we shall
allow unwholesome conditions to grow because
of indifference, ignorance and the absence of
the courage necessary to fight the interests
which are against it. (1927, 365)
The comprehensive zonification plan for Manila
was first proposed by the Municipal Board on
September 1921. The plan classified certain
portions of Manila into the following:
1. Industrial zone - where industries
that may be permitted by the Bureau of
Health within the City limits may be con-
ducted subject to City regulations.
2. Semi-industrial zone - where all fac-
tories not of an offensive nature may
be located. In these districts tobacco
factories, wholesale clothing factories,
sawmills, carpenters’ shops, blacksmiths’
shops, large automobile repair-shops,
laundries, and rice-mills may be located.
3. The commercial district - commercial
houses, shops, godowns and other in-
dustries not detrimental thereto may be
allowed.
4. The residential zone - residences
of middle-class and well-to-do people
should be encouraged, but small busi-
ness or commercial undertakings such
as small retail-stores, retail drug-stores,
small tailor-shops shall be allowed.
5. The park zone - to be reserved exclu-
sively for parks and cemetery purposes.
6. The special residential zone - refers
to the zone surrounding the Malacanang
Palace within which there shall not be
permitted the installation and construc-
tion of steam-boilers, blacksmith-shops
and laundries, buildings for match, oil
and cigar and cigarette factories.
The zoning ordinance was never enacted due to
much opposition from property owners whose
business might be affected by land classifica-
tion. Real-estate investors in Pandacan, Tondo,
and religious corporations worked against the
proposed zonification in the fear of an imped-
ing real-estate crisis and a probable plunge in
the real estate values as soon as the plan took
effect. On the other hand, the Asociacion de
Propietarios de Manila did not contest the zoni-
fication of the City in principle, but suggested,
in support of their vested interests, a proposed
plan which was practically unacceptable to 143
other people whose interests might be affected.
The pressure exerted upon the Municipal Board
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
was so strong and the forces of opposition were
so organized that the proposed zonification
plan failed to materialize, to the detriment of
the City of Manila.
In 1928, the plan to zonify Manila was again
taken by the municipality when Mayor Tomas
Earnshaw created the Zoning Committee on
22 March, via Executive Order No. 4. This body
was tasked to make a through preliminary study
and tender recommendations for a zonification
plan of Manila, which would be the basis of a
public hearing. The said committee had a multi-
disciplinary constitution, composed of City En-
gineer Santiago Artiaga as chairman and mem-
bers which included Director of Public Works
Alpheus Williams; Director of Health Eugenio
Hernando; Sanitary Engineer Manuel Mañosa;
Architect Tomas Arguelles of the President of
Proprietors’ Association of Manila; J.R. Wilson
of the American Chamber of Commerce; and
Vicente Fernandez of the Chamber of Com-
merce of the Philippine Islands. Juan Arellano,
acting consulting architect, attended its ses-
sions and participated in its sub-committees.
Dean Francisco Benitez, Dr. Serafin Macaraig,
and Eulogio Rodriguez were appointed by the
Mayor as consultants to form a subcommittee
that would study the sociological and histori-
cal aspects of the city. (The Government of the
Philippine Island, Department of Interior and
Labor 1933, 11)
144

1933 Zonification Plan designed by Juan Arellano

This municipal initiative to zonify Manila was
received enthusiastically by real estate develop-
ers like C.M. Hoskins. According to him, prop-
erty owners were convinced of the pragmatic
and economic significance of the zonification
project. He cited the case of the residential dis-
trict of Santa Mesa Heights whose desirability
was largely because that it had been “scrupu-
lously preserved for residential purposes.” He
underscored the benefits of zoning as a means
to “prevent depression in real estate values”
because of its stabilizing influence. Also he em-
phasized the significance of zonification in the
planning of streets and delivery of electricity,
gas, water and telephone utilities to subscrib-
ers. (Hoskins 23 July 1929, 5)
To prepare the comprehensive zoning plan for
Manila, the Zonification Committee held 21
sessions out of which 2 were public hearings
within a span of four years. The first session
was held on 4 April 1928 and ended on 29
September 1932. The motivation, according to
chairman Santiago Artiaga, for its creation was
the absence of a zoning system which caused
depreciation of land values:
In a city where no zoning system is in force, any
manufacturing concerns may at the moment
intrude upon the most desirable neighborhoods
where values are high and destroy them by
erecting a manufacturing plant in their midst.
This will necessarily result in serious loss to
owners of properties in those vicinities, in the
values of their investments and also in the pro-
duction of insanitary and noisome conditions.
(Ibid., 3)
The committee also underscored its urban fore-
sight with the aim:
…to direct the future building develop-
ment of the city along orderly lines. It
secures the residential, commercial and
industrial interests by setting aside spe-
cial districts for each of these uses. In
accordance with well-established prec-
edent it ensures all districts adequate
light and air by regulating the height
of buildings and providing for reason-
able open spaces, thus making the city
healthier to live in. Zoning also tends
to toward marinating the appearance
of residential districts and guaranteeing
the inhabitants therein quietness, pleas-
antness of surroundings, and freedom
from smokes, smells, and noises which
are inevitable in commercial and indus-
145
trial sections. (Ibid.)
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
The taxonomy of spaces and functions adopted
by the Manila Zoning Ordinance were were
the following: (1) Class “A” residential districts
for the best class of single family residences,
apartments, hotels, clubs, schools, churches,
etc.; (2) Class “B” residential districts for ten-
ement, boarding, and lodging houses, hotels,
clubs, schools, hospitals, libraries, drug stores,
restaurants, barber shops, laundries, public
baths, bowling alleys, pool rooms, etc.; (3)
Commercial zones for markets, bakeries, dry
good and grocery stores, office buildings, ga-
rages and gasoline service stations, newspaper
plants, printing shops, shoe factories, steam
laundries, funeral parlors, tiendas, etc.; (4)
Light industrial zones for factories with noisy
machinery, cigar and cigarette factories, small
machine shops, etc.; (5) Heavy industrial zones
for shipyards, gas plants, blast furnaces, lum-
beryards and sawmills, machine shops, found-
ries, dairies, distilleries, paint factories, match
factories, etc.; (6) Offensive zones for fertilizer
factories, sewage disposal/plants, raw sugar re-
fineries, soap factories, tanneries, stock yards,
slaughterhouses, etc., (7) Parks, including play-
grounds, cemeteries, municipal nurseries, etc.;
and (8) Unrestricted areas for recreation cent-
ers such as dance halls, cabarets, and cockpits.
The ordinance also provided that a fifty-meter
strip on both sides of all railroad tracks and riv-
ers would be set aside for heavy industry (Sec-
tion 2). According to the ordinance, established
 businesses might continue in their present lo-
cations for a period not to exceed fifteen years
under certain conditions (Section 15). However,
the entire effect of the ordinance was practi-
cally destroyed by an amendment, inserted as
Section 20, which provided: “This ordinance
shall have no effect nor value upon those busi-
nesses or industries with a capital not exceed-
ing P5,000 which are not considered offensive.”
This ambiguous provision would have made it
146 possible for almost any little business to estab-
lish itself where the owner pleased, regardless
of zoning lines. (Philippine Magazine November
1934, 484)
The Zoning Committee published their first sec-
tional zoning plans or maps in 1931. Through
consultative public hearings, it was found nec-
essary to make many revisions in these plans
and new maps were published in 1933. The
zoning ordinance was passed by the Municipal
Board.
As expected, there who many who registered
their opposition for the said zonification plan.
Zoning at first was considered one of the most
radical departures from the traditional concepts
of private property ownership because it was
perceived as prohibiting a citizen from devot-
ing his property to a purpose useful and entirely
harmless. In response the courts generally ruled
that the police power justified the enactment
of such ordinances to prevent congestion, to
secure quiet residential districts and to procure
an orderly segregation of industrial, commer-
cial and residential areas brought about by the
constantly increasing density of urban popu-
lations, the multiplying forms of industry and
the growing complexities of urban life. In the
case of Sang Kee & Co. vs. Tomas Earnshaw,
in discussing the power of the City of Manila
to enact ordinances establishing industrial and
residential zones, the Supreme Court ruled in
21 October 1931:
There can no doubt that the City of Manila has
the power to divide its territory into residential
and industrial zones, and to prescribe that of-
fensive and unwholesome trades and occupa-
tions are to be established exclusively in the lat-
ter zone…Likewise, it cannot be denied that the
City of Manila has the authority, derived from
the police power, of forbidding the appellant to
continue the manufacture of toyo [soy sauce]
in the zone were it is now situated, which has
been declared residential, without providing for
any compensation; these provisions of the Re-
vised Ordinances do not in fact deprive Manila
residents of their property without just com-
pensation, or it deprives them neither the own-
ership nor of the possession thereof, but simply
restricts them from the use of such property at
certain places for the good of the majority of
inhabitants. (Philippine Jurisprudence, GR No.
L-34976)
In October 1934, when the terms of office of
the Mayor and Municipal Board who initiated
the ordinance expired, the new Mayor, Juan Po-
sadas, Jr., vetoed the said ordinance. This move
was taken to accommodate some changes “to
avoid inadvisable and unjust restrictions” and
amendments “as seemed necessary” to be
made by the new Municipal Board. (Philippine
Magazine November 1934, 484)
Among “a number of undesirable restrictions of
a minor nature” imposed by the said ordinance
was the decision to convert practically the en-
tire area around Malacañang Palace into a Class
“A” residential district when great portions of it,
especially along the river, were and had been
for many years devoted to heavy industrial use.
The general objective of this phase of the plan
was to shield Malacañang, but a question was
raised: “whether, after fifteen years, during
which the industrial establishments now situ-
ated there need not move under the terms of
the ordinance, Malacañang will still be occu-
pied by the chief executive of the Philippines,
and, this being doubtful, whether it is therefore
desirable to halt the natural business and in-
dustrial development in that section of the city,
so important because of its river location.” It
was a generally accepted principle in Manila’s
urban planning, which was also demanded by
the Burnham Plan, that the land along navi-
gable rivers was a natural industrial zone, and
along the Pasig River during this time, except
for the stretch on both sides of Malacañang,
was predominated by nothing but warehous-
es, shipyards, power plants, machine shops,
foundries, sawmills, breweries, huge oil and gas
tanks, vegetable oil factories and other heavy
industrial facilities. This industrial nature of
Manila’s riverfronts was in fact upheld by the
Supreme Court decision in 1916, in the case of
De Ayala vs. Baretto, which in gist maintained
“that residents in a district along a natural wa-
ter course suitable for transportation, which
although at first largely residential becomes a
trading or manufacturing area, must submit to
the general course of commercial and industrial
progress.”(Ibid.) The district in question was the
San Miguel district in which Malacañang Palace
stands.
The 1935 version of the Zonification Plans of
Manila failed five times to generate enough
votes of approval at the Municipal Board due
to the opposition from real estate and stake-
holder groups. By 1940, the policies concern-
ing city planning and zonal regulations was
transferred to the national government when
these concerns “shifted to the upward to the
Malacañang,” with the arrival of Harvard-
trained American planner Louis Croft to assume
a post as adviser to the President for National
Parks and Planning Office. (Ocampo 1992,
322; Dillon 1946, 19) Among his prewar efforts
was the preparation of the burned district of
Tondo in 1941, which triggered another com-
prehensive plan for greater Manila. These plans
were being drawn when the World War II broke
out in December 1941. (Croft 1947, 264) After
the war, Croft resurfaced to serve as the head
of the National Urban Planning Commission
and designed the plans for the reconstruction
of war-torn Manila, including the metropolitan
Major Thoroughfare Plans, the Downtown Area
Plan, and the revision of the Building Code.
(Croft 1947, 256)
Distorting the Burnham Plan
Inevitably, the changes in government priorities
with the shift in governorship and the paucity
of means led to many alterations. For instance, 147
the number and alignment of railway lines in
Manila were changed, and a station instead
R E G U L AT I N G C O LO N I A L S PA C E S
of a terminal was erected in Paco. The zoning
of Pandacan was amended from residential to
industrial and park uses. (Arellano 1919, 21)
By the 1930s, remarkable departures from the
original plan, prompted former Manila Mayor
Felix Roxas to declare these detours as “distor-
tion of the Burnham Plan.”(Roxas 1970, 365)
A son of preeminent pioneer architect, pro-fed-
eralist Roxas criticized Governor General Har-
rison’s administration for the wanton disregard
of Burnham’s planning instructions:
The mandatory instructions – to which all
new constructions are to be subjected to the
requirements imposed by the Burnham plan,
which was promulgated during the Forbes ad-
ministration – have been ignored by Governor
General Harrison who, blinded by his “laissez
faire” policy, was partial to Filipinos in power;
he considered himself exempted from the re-
strictions imposed by the plan. He thus permit-
ted an applicant to construct a warehouse on
a public wharf bordering the Pasig River, near
the Intendencia Building. And when, with the
knowledge of his economic advisers and of the
Bureau of Public Works, he invested a cool mil-
lion pesos in the construction of a luxurious ex-
ecutive office in Malacañang…According to the
Burnham plan, to which Governor Harrison had
access at all times, the Residence of the Gover-
nor General and his executive offices should be
located facing Manila Bay…The district where
Malacañang is found has become an industrial
148
sector, the presence of the Palace there is a nui-
sance to the Zonification project. (Roxas 1970,
365-66)
In the end, the plan was only partly realized.
The economics of colonialism (limited self-gov-
ernment came in 1935), World War II, and the
Japanese conquest restricted implementation.
But some of Burnham’s roads were laid out, Ri-
zal Park was created on the Bagumbayan field,
and several important public buildings were
constructed.
Conclusions
For almost half-a-century the implementation
of colonial urban design and the production of
colonial architecture created a metropolitan im-
agery that bears witness to America’s hygienic
control, altruistic building program, colonial
tutelage, and technological progress expressed
along the urban grids of “Manila Beautiful” -- a
mythical image of urban memory prior to the
Pacific War.
Enlightened by rationality of the science of
tropical medicine, the American colonial sani-
tarians in the Philippines saw themselves as
benevolent hygienic reformers, bringing the
gospel of cleanliness to ignorant Filipinos
whose bodies they saw as reservoirs for patho-
gens acquired from filthy habits and customs.
These suspect bodies would be the subject of
biopolitical strategies of surveillance, allow-
ing the colonial state to deeply infiltrate and
regulate the intimate detail of everyday spatial
practices. The creation of a colonial city neces-
sitated not only the physical intervention of the
colonial environment, but also the mobilization
of sanitary surveillance of the colonial bodies
via the lens of imperial medicine, so that new
spatial forms and architectural models were im-
posed as regulatory apparatus of the colonial
state. The control over colonial space could be
gleaned as prophylactic urban prescription to
warrant the survival of white men in an esoteric
colonial ecology and ensure the wellness and
productivity of colonial subjects.
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