Navotas ‘Century House’ eyed as cultural site
For generations, an antique house in Navotas City stood out along a narrow road lined with local drug stores just across the Navotas city hospital.
Behind the gated walls stood the two-story antique house facing the road with large capiz windowpanes, topped with what looked like a small chimney on the roof. Just above the gated entrance were the embossed words that gave the house its name today – Century House.
The house and the heritage status accorded to it by residents prompted Councilor Richard San Juan to file a proposed ordinance declaring the so-called “Century House” in Barangay San Jose a city cultural property, thus protecting it demolition and preserving it as a heritage site.
The ordinance would penalize demolition of the heritage structure with a P5,000 fine or one year imprisonment, among other penalties also provided in the National Cultural Heritage Act.
Simple beginnings
The house, first built by the family’s patriarch Potenciano Gabriel during the latter part of the 19th century, was not yet known as the elaborately crafted antique house fondly remembered even by the city’s elderly today, according to the patriarch’s living great granddaughter, 62-year-old Grace Ignacio.
“The present look of the house now is no longer an original. It was just a simple-looking house that my mother was able to renovate through the years,” Ignacio said.
She confirmed some stories about preserved birds in the house, because her great-grandfather was fond of taking care of birds. She scoffed at a tale that there was a preserved crab with three sets of legs in the house, and flatly denied talk the house was known as a “museum.”
Ignacio is related to the patriarch through her mother, whose grandfather Santiago was one of Potenciano Gabriel’s children. “He was fond of collecting birds. He was a humble man, used to be seen in his
camiso, and who was known for he had several men helping him in weaving nets for the fishponds,” Ignacio said in recounting stories about
“Kabesang Gabriel” passed down from generations.