Today marks the commemoration itself of Apolinario Mabini’s 150th birth anniversary. What better way to close off this special than a feature on the house that has long been talked about: Mabini’s Nagtahan house now known as the Mabini Shrine in its new and permanent “home” right at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines’ (PUP) main campus, which is also known as the Mabini Campus. (even before the move of the shrine) While it may seem odd to find such a house looking out of place in the middle of a busy campus, it does seem to complement the campus in a way, serving as a sort of a quiet spot…
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Mabini150: Mabini and Nagtahan
If there is one place in the metropolis that has a solid association with Apolinario Mabini, it would be the road and the neighborhood called Nagtahan which straddles between the present-day districts of San Miguel and Santa Mesa in the City of Manila. Nagtahan got its name from a word in Tagalog which means to stop or end. It was named so because in the olden days, Calle Nagtahan was a dead end, ending a few meters before the bank of the Pasig River. Despite that, it grew as a rural suburb of Manila during the late Spanish colonial period as some decided to take residence in the area. One…
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Santa Mesa’s “university town”: the PUP Mabini Campus (Part 1)
October 17 marks the anniversary of the country’s most highly populated university, the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) which was first established in 1904 by the American colonial government as the Manila Business School. While the university is a network itself of campuses located around Metro Manila and elsewhere in the country, PUP will always be associated more with its main campus located in Santa Mesa, Manila. (somewhat in the same manner as Diliman is to the University of the Philippines) Santa Mesa’s association with the university began in the 1960’s when , in particular the area along the north bank of the Pasig River near the intersection of…