On its 11th anniversary, the Urban Roamer shares a personal story of how the Philamlife Building has shaped him over the years.
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Manansala’s Philamlife Paintings at the National Museum
When the Urban Roamer got the opportunity to visit the Philamlife Building at Ermita during its (sob) final days, one of the things I was fixated upon was the artworks whose artist was a mystery to me at that time. Thanks to a reader, I found out that those artworks were actually done by Vicente Manansala himself, National Artist for Visual Arts alongside with colleagues like Fernando Amorsolo and Botong Francisco. The paintings are a a series of 7 commissioned works completed by Manansala in 1961, the same year the Philamlife Building was completed, done in the cubist style Manansala was known for. While the issue about the fate of the…
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Roamer’s Roundup: 3rd issue
It’s been a while but with some interesting developments going around the metropolis during the past few months, this merits a new edition of our Roamer’s Roundup! ======================= Here’s some good news first to start things off. Heeding the petition of thousands spearheaded by the conductor of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra Olivier Ochanine, the Philamlife Auditorium is headed to get a new lease of life under new ownership which is that of the SM group’s SMDC which has plans of building another one of those residential projects there. In a statement released by SMDC, they said, “Although the development plan is still in its initial stage, SMDC stressed that the…
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Ermita Icon: The Philamlife Building
As the Philippines was recovering from the devastation of the Second World War, a surge of economic progress was beginning to take place beginning in the 1950’s. By the dawn of the following decade, new infrastructures, housing developments, and commercial establishments were beginning to take shape and arise in the horizon. One of these structures is the focus of this entry: the building of the Philippine American Life and General Insurance Company at Ermita district in Manila. The Philamlife (or Philam Life, depending on your source but both forms are acceptable) Building was built in 1961 along Ermita’s major thoroughfare that we know now as United Nations Avenue (then known…