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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Rizal, Santo Tomas, and Sampaloc
As you may have noticed these past few entries, we have devoted space in this blog on the University of Santo Tomas campus. But on the occasion of the 150th birth anniversary of the Philippines’ National Hero, Jose Rizal, allow me to take a little diversion of this trip to talk about this school’s “relationship” with our hero. To anyone with some knowledge of Rizal’s biography, it is a well-known fact that Rizal entered University of Santo Tomas in 1877 and managed to get a degree in Philosophy and Letters two years later. He then proceeding to medicine, ophthalmology to be precise, for the next 2 years before going to…
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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.