These days, the University of Santo Tomas’s Main Building stands tall and proud in front of the wide Plaza Mayor which sits in between the building and the Benavides Monument. A former street and parking place, it was converted into an open space that is being used from time to time during campus events. With the Main Building as the background, any event there undoubtedly gives one a true Thomasian vibe to it. But apart from serving as backdrop as the administrative seat of the University, the Main Building also serves as the academic home of the university’s Faculty of Civil Law, College of Science, and the Faculty of Pharmacy.
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Manila’s Pontifical and Royal campus (Part 7: the Main Building)
Among all the landmarks that one can see today in the campus of University of Santo Tomas, none perhaps would be as more well-known and beloved as the structure known as the Main Building, the first and the oldest structure that was built in UST’s current campus in Sampaloc. Plans for its construction began in 1920, but its actual construction began 4 years later as its architect, a Dominican priest-engineer named Roque Ruaño was fine tuning its details so it would be able to withstand any powerful earthquake that may occur, as inspired by events, earthquakes in particular, in Japan during that period. Thus it became also known as the…
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Manila’s Pontifical and Royal campus (Part 6)
Being the country’s oldest university, it should not be a surprise that the University of Santo Tomas holds a significant number of titles in its library. In fact, UST’s book collection dates back to as far as before the founding of the university, when these books were first owned by Dominicans, (who among them was the university’s founder himself Miguel de Benavides) who donated their book collections for the establishment of what is now UST. As was mentioned previously, UST was first founded as a school for theology, philosophy, and law; most of these old books dealt with those particular subjects. Over the years and centuries, UST library collection got…
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Manila’s Pontifical and Royal Campus (Part 5, a center for faith and thought)
By the 1930’s as the University of Santo Tomas began to settle itself comfortably at its new home in Sampaloc, plans and works were under way for the expansion of what was then just a one-building complex in the middle of what was then a vast tract of land that was its campus. One of the buildings being planned was one that would serve as the University church and residence as well: of the Dominican priests who are assigned there and the seminarians learning to become Dominican priests themselves.