A Photo Essay by Luis Liwanag

Text by Karla Maquiling

IT IS HARD TO MISS Bahay Pawid. From the corner of Pedro David Street, a stone’s throw from the Betis church in Guagua, Pampanga, you’ll see it—the venerable two-story structure, proud and tall, having sheltered generations of Davids for 105 years (this includes UP professor Randy and his brother, lawyer Dante; the street is named after their late father).

Atty. Dante David opened the doors of the restored family home and showed us around, proud of this project that has taken him years to execute.

The Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991 had elevated a big part of Pampanga, and the ground floor of the David home was covered. In 2002, after much planning, Atty. David started a home renovation that would go on for years.

“The upper part of the house is the original one,” he explained. “It was raised by heavy-duty hydraulic jacks several meters off the ground.” Supported by vertical and horizontal wood trusses, the second story took eight days to elevate.

About 13 truckloads of lahar were brought to stabilize the ground floor, which would later be rebuilt. Almost each piece that makes up the first story has a history.

“This staircase,” the lawyer said, his hand gliding against the balustrade smoothly, like a father lightly touching an infant’s head, “was detached from a demolished apartment.”

The staircase was unearthed from a lahar-covered house in Bacolor. The Spanish-style capiz windows also came from old structures.

“It’s therapeutic for him—a respite from all his cases,” Mrs. David said of her husband as we stood outside, admiring the second-floor windows.

One of her children had salvaged half a pair of the windows from a junk shop. “It took us some time to find another one and have it repainted, and finally find use for it!” she exclaimed.

One is amazed by the sentimentality, the conscious effort to preserve something that has passed from generation to generation. “Venerable homes from an era now gone are torn down and sold for a song,” Prof. Randy David observes. But to Dante David, who grew up there with 12 other siblings, sliding through the mahogany planks during the lazy afternoons, Bahay Pawid is a diary of a childhood that he will cherish forever.

Photography by Luis Liwanag

PinoyCentric is grateful to Atty. and Mrs. Dante David and Mrs. Venus Celicious-Yap for making this visit possible.
- - - - - - - - - -

Tour Bahay Pawid with us through this slideshow.