Architectural Marvel: General Aniceto L. Lacson Ancestral House in Talisay City Negros Occidental

Did you know that for a brief moment in time, Negros was a separate state from the rest of the Philippines? On the 5th of November 1898, the Negrense people launched a successful revolution against Spanish occupation, forming the Republica Cantonal de Negros. The revolutionary government lasted only until 4 March 1899—headed by General Aniceto L. Lacson, a prominent sugar baron and statesman, the first and only President of the Negros Republic. As President, Lacson’s own ancestral home became the official presidential residence and seat of government.

The General Aniceto L. Lacson Ancestral House, grand and historic as a key site of the Negros Revolution, as well as architecturally significant in its masterful construction; the House was declared a National Historical Landmark by the National Historical Institute (now the National Historical Commission of the Philippines) in 2002. Located in Talisay City, Negros Occidental, and built in 1880 in the 19th-century floral style of Spanish-colonial Filipino domestic architecture; the two-storey mansion is constructed of brick masonry, dressed coralstone, and wood. The ground floor of the structure includes a granite-floored zaguan, an entire chapel, offices, a mezzanine, and an interior courtyard. The upper floor has living areas and bedrooms, a pair of terraces overlooking the courtyard, and an attached kitchen.

Significant architectural features abound in the exterior and interior of the House, including its grand staircase, made of intricately carved tindalo wood with stylized dragon motifs intertwined throughout the balustrade; the wrap-around balcony of the upper floor, continuous around all four sides of the house; and the fact that the upper floor has no traditional windows of any kind—instead, the second floor has fourteen sets of full double-doorways opening out to the wrap-around balcony, a unique feature of the mansion.

Today the house remains in the private ownership of General Lacson’s descendants, though it has been uninhabited since the 1970s due to damage from a ravaging typhoon. The house in its current condition is in a fair state of conservation, with the General Aniceto Lacson Ancestral House Foundation being rightfully founded to advocate the preservation of this significant built heritage that is important to the history of the Negrense people—and to the Filipino nation as a whole.

Source: National Museum of the Philippines