I would have designated this mansion a national treasure a long time ago; this very rare gem of a home is so beautiful you wouldn't believe you're not in a movie set. But ironically, it's been turned into a movie set! A lot of times!
On this side of the Negros island, particularly in Silay City in the north, 19th and early 20th-century ancestral homes have been diligently preserved by landed families, turning their homes into a showcase of the city's history and heritage.
While the neighboring Talisay City boasts of its most famous historical landmark, The Ruins (read blog here), a 1920s mansion that was deliberately torched during WWII and whose silhouette and history were turned into a tourist attraction, Silay City, on the other hand, has Balay Negrense (read here), also well-preserved Gaston family mansion completed in 1901 that, other than being an attraction itself, hosts a celebration of the city's culinary heritage 'Kaon Ta!', my mom's favorite.
But closer to my hometown is another beautiful mansion. This one's even more special. Why? It's a real home!
(This dirt road belies what treasure lies ahead)
The Gaston Mansion in the middle of Hacienda Santa Rosalia in Manapla on the northern part of the Negros island in the Philippines was built in 1935, and it's very well-preserved and still postcard-perfect that it has been featured in many period movies like Oro, Plata, Mata; Sonata; and Everyday I Love you.
And since the mansion is just close by, on one pre-Covid weekend, we visited Monsignor Guillermo 'GG' Gaston, whom we personally know, in his mansion. Yes, that's why I called this mansion a real home because he still lives there. It has five rooms on the second floor and four rooms on the ground floor.
Monsignor GG is a Catholic priest and one of the eight children of Don Jose Gaston and his wife, Doña Consuelo Azcona-Gaston. Don Jose, coincidentally, has appeared in two of my previous blogs: the first was about a 1940 photograph at Don Felix Montinola's home in Victorias (read blog here), and another was about a 1961 photograph while having lunch with President Diosdado Macapagal (read blog here).
According to Monsignor GG, the land on which the Gaston Mansion now stands was originally owned by his grandmother's family (Doña Rosalia Policar who later married an Azcona) as his father's family's (the Gastons) hacienda was situated in Victorias, the next town to the south. Monsignor GG's mother was Doña Consuelo Azcona-Gaston, a daughter of Doña Rosalia Policar-Azcona. In those days, the tradition of naming the hacienda was by using the name of a saint who was a namesake of the hacendádo, or haciéndero.
(Workers in Hacienda Santa Rosalia
on their way to work)
During our visit, I had to ask Monsignor GG about their family name, Gaston. I studied French and the name Gaston was a given name (and not a family name) that was always used in our French textbooks as an example, and my hunch was right!
Their family name was actually Germain, a French surname. Why did it become Gaston? During the Spanish period, when the Spaniards were registering Yves Leopold (Monsignor Gigi's great-grandfather), the Spaniards mistook Gaston as his family name, instead of Germain. His full name was Yves Leopold Gaston Germain, and the Spanish registrars thought Gaston was the apellido paterno (father's surname) and Germain the apellido materno (mother's surname) because that was the way they wrote their names in Spain (given name, father's surname, and mother's surname).
And so Gaston became his and his descendants' last name. Yves Leopold, by the way, was from Lisieux in the Normandy Region of France and is credited for bringing to the Negros island, in the 19th century, the sugar technology that changed the province's landscape (literally!) and fortunes forever.
(The Germain, er, Gaston family genealogy
starting with Yves Leopold and wife Prudencia is
divided into three main branches, representing
their three children, using France's
colors: white, blue and red.
Monsignor Gigi belongs to the blue branch.)
When the mansion was being built, the construction was slow as it was meticulously supervised by Don Jose himself. The furniture in the mansion was all made within the grounds and everything is still kept in the mansion until today as the family has decided to keep everything as it was since the early 20th century.
The mansion's architecture is Victorian and is surrounded by beautiful gardens, fruit-bearing trees, and sugarcane fields all over. It's less than 800 meters from the main national highway from where you wouldn't be able to tell that there's a gem of a home somewhere down the road.
(While Talisay City's The Ruins is the most Instagrammable silhouette, this mansion is the most popular mansion for film and photo-shoots.)
(If only these steps could talk, it would
enumerate the who's-whos who visited
the mansion from 1935 until the present.)
At the back of the mansion, Monsignor GG built a place of worship, The Chapel of the Cartwheels, in 1966 after he came back from Rome, Italy, where he completed his theological studies.
Using the old, discarded cartwheels kept by his father, Don Jose, Monsignor Gigi turned these as symbols of a Christian faith: the center represents God; the spokes represent Jesus as they point and connect to God at the center with Jesus being 'the Way to the Father'; and the Holy Spirit, represented by the ring of the wheel, keeps everyone from being lost.
(An enchanted garden in front of the mansion, a fountain, and two statues created in the likeness of two of Don Jose's daughters, and a visitor😃. The statue in the background is the Virgin Mary.)
The cartwheel is the Holy Trinity and is the everyday symbol and reminder for the sugarcane workers in the hacienda. Although the cartwheels fell into disuse due to technology when they were replaced by rubber tires, they have been elevated into a holy symbol of the hacienda's chapel.
(The Chapel of the Cartwheels is Monsignor
Gigi's thanksgiving for all the blessings
bestowed on his family)
With the help of Monsignor GG's brother-in-law, Jerry Ascalon, an architect, the Chapel of the Cartwheels was completed, where the first Holy Mass in Hiligaynon was celebrated by then Bacolod Diocese's Bishop Antonio Fortich on May 5, 1967. Monsignor GG made the first ever translation of the Liturgy from Latin to Hiligaynon and had choir hymns in the local language prepared for that Mass. They had to ask permission from the Catholic Church in order to have the Mass celebrated in Hiligaynon, and not Latin.
(The cartwheel's center, spokes, and ring
represent the Holy Trinity)
The Chapel of the Cartwheels was built on the former site of Monsignor GG's grandparents and it's his thanksgiving to all the blessings showered on his family.
But do you know their mansion could not have survived World War II if not for a miracle?😟
(The Chapel's cross against the blue skies)
During the last days of World War II, one terror-filled morning, at about 4AM when it was still dark, the Gaston family was awakened by a big fire at the main town of Manapla, about three kilometers northeast of the hacienda. The fire, visible from the mansion's rooftop, was caused by the retreating Japanese soldiers coming from the north and who were setting big structures, including mansions in the haciendas, on fire along their way.
Word reached the hacienda that the Japanese soldiers had already torched the nearest mansion, Benjamin Gamboa's mansion, located near the main road just outside Manapla. A man, who was probably a hacienda worker sent to find out what was going on at the outskirts of the hacienda, came back with the bad news and told Don Jose the scariest words he heard that day, "Daw kamo na guid ang dason", or "It looks like you're next" in English.
Monsignor GG was just 14 then, and I could just imagine the trauma kids his age (or even younger!) experienced that tragic morning. But Don Jose, who was a devotee of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, prayed with his family for safety and surrendered everything to God's will.
Two trucks carrying the Japanese soldiers were already making their way through the dirt road going into the hacienda and were probably itching to, not only to set the big house on fire, but also to bayonet and kill anyone they would see or offer resistance at the hacienda grounds. (During their years of occupation, the Japanese military had mapped these areas and knew exactly where those mansions were located).
Although Don Jose, his family, and his servants and their own families were able to immediately flee to safety away from the mansion and towards the direction of the coast, Don Jose thought his family's home would suffer the same fate as the others. But suddenly, out of the nowhere, from the dark skies above that was beginning to see morning light, an American Northrop P61 plane appeared and strafed the Japanese and their trucks.
The Northrop P61 was nicknamed by the American military as 'Black Widow' and was specifically made to be a night-fighter plane. It only carried three crews: the pilot, the radar operator, and the gunner. So even in the dark, the radar operator must have seen the Japanese trucks heading towards what looked like a big house in the middle of a plantation. Immediately, the crew decided to fly low and strafed the enemy from the sky. The strafing must have caused some casualties because the Japanese immediately turned around and left Hacienda Santa Rosalia alone. As these soldiers had been moving around since the day before torching houses and blowing up mansions in the north, they must have been very tired, hungry, lacking sleep, and worse, losing morale as they realized they were about to lose the war.
Indeed, Don Jose's prayers were answered by a miracle from above, figuratively and literally.
(Fresh breezes, fruit-bearing trees, and
birds singing greet anyone standing on
the mansion's northeast balcony)
Just like Iloilo City's Camiña Balay nga Bato (read blog here) whose original furnishings and furniture were also preserved by the family, I also admire and commend the Gaston family for preserving their home and sharing their family heritage with the mansion's visitors and admirers, including moi.
So, merci beaucoup à Monsieur Yves Leopold and his descendants for giving us the Germain, er, Gaston Mansion.😉
To Monsignor GG, hopefully, we can visit Hacienda Sta. Rosalia when this pandemic will have blown over.😊
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Here is Hacienda Sta. Rosalia's Facebook page:
