Inside Balay Daku, The Boat House of Bacolod's Millionaires' Row

(SPOT.ph) From the gate, it looks like a ship—hence the moniker “Boat House”—but inside, the Generoso M. Villanueva mansion in Bacolod looks like a spectacular theater, a structure no doubt made for big time entertaining. The staircase alone that connects the ground level all the way to the third floor is a statement, one so fabulous a guest immediately imagines ball gowns descending its steps.

The facade of the Generoso M. Villanueva house. PHOTO BY Aeson Baldevia

The main entrance. PHOTO BY Aeson Baldevia

It’s almost strange to find architecture this ultra modern in present day Bacolod.  Despite the city’s fast-changing landscape, with buildings and developments rising here and there, life here remains unhurried still, starkly opposite from the forward-moving aesthetic and spirit of the Villanueva house. The design is Streamline Moderne they say, an Art deco style that shuns ornamentation. But this mansion—on its walls, its railings, its ceilings—clearly embraced ornamentation with open arms. Even during its time, or when the sugar baron Villanueva completed the structure in the 1930s, we imagine it must have stuck out among Negros’ haciendero homes.

The ground floor reception area. PHOTO BY Aeson Baldevia

The dramatic staircase. PHOTO BY Aeson Baldevia

For starters, it was the tallest in the city—up until the RCBC erected its bank in the early 1950s that is. Still, height is hardly the most important thing about this mansion, although that’s the first reason the Japanese army wanted it as one of its headquarters during the war—the better to see the comings and goings in the area. It was ultimately the beauty of its architecture and interiors, however, that the Japanese general fell in love with, which was why he made it his personal residence, and told his men to go easy on the house. “He warned his soldiers not to break a single window, so that’s why the house is intact,” says Ben Scharlin, great grandson of Generoso, who gave us a tour of the mansion on a recent Thursday afternoon.

Quilt pattern on a door and an original door knob. PHOTO BY Aeson Baldevia

This second floor mural is a tribute to Bacolod. PHOTO BY Aeson Baldevia

Ben tells us the house remains largely as it was made, with the original marble, iron and wood work intact. The hinges and knobs are still original, and everything opens and closes as they should. Generoso, the man who built the house, never traveled outside of the Philippines but it was likely his visits to his friends’ houses in Manila that gave him the idea to build such a home of modern sensibility; Art deco after all was the popular style in the capital at the time.

Ben Scharlin and his mother Lilia looking through the porthole, one of the many nautical touches in the house. PHOTO BY Aeson Baldevia

Generoso was a “powerful figure and major player” in the Negros sugar industry, according to the book Houses That Sugar Built—but his great granddaughter Lilia, Ben’s mom, says he was largely a self-made man. Looked down upon while making his way to the top, it seemed the guy wanted to make a statement via his residence: he wanted it the tallest, it had the city’s first elevator, it even had its own orchestra pit—out in the balcony where one can imagine cocktail parties in full swing, under the stars, in the middle of sugarcane fields.

Lilia’s office, formerly the game room of the man who built the house, her Lolo Gener. PHOTO BY Aeson Baldevia

A fly and spider detail on the ceiling of Lilia’s third floor office. PHOTO BY Aeson Baldevia

But Lilia’s Lolo Gener was no ordinary sugar baron out to prove his worth to his rivals: he had an artistic streak and a taste for the whimsical, too. For how else could one build a house so symbolic of the world’s technological advancements and still insist on making it personal, anchored on a love for animals (he owned the city’s first zoo!) and the stories of his home island. One can find images of carabaos on the richly patterned terrazzo floors, a gang of Tamaraws atop an arched doorway, and open-mouthed snake heads at the end of a stair’s banister.

The house is filled with details of Bacolod life. PHOTO BY Aeson Baldevia

Ben and his mother Lilia who, in the Houses That Sugar Built , is described as the mansion’s fiercest protector. PHOTO BY Aeson Baldevia

On Lilia’s bright and beautiful third floor office alone, originally the game room of his Lolo Gener, Ben points to an artwork of a drunk monkey and wise monkey on a wall, an owl and a bat, a spider and the fly on the ceiling—characters based on Hiligaynon folk tales, he says. These figures now share the same space with the art collection of his mother, who together with his father Craig ran a gallery in New York for many years showing Asian-American art, and who is now, as the book Houses That Sugar Built describes her, “the fiercest protector” of the Villanueva home.

“I have learned this is really my grandfather’s story,” Lilia shares in the book. “[In the mural], he depicted the farmers as strong, with Graeco-Roman women symbolising abundance, as he also has a three-hectare fruit orchard. Fanciful animals because he loved them, and a haranista (serenader) since he loved music. There is a bahay kubo [traditional timber-and-thatch house on stilts], a sugar mill and the Philippine sunset. So you see this is a very modern house infused with traditional Philippine symbols. It’s a reminder of who he was, a Filipino.”