Home tour: Inside Daku Balay, an art deco mansion in Bacolod City with a treasured past

What the mansion’s steward is certain of is the identity of the architect. Salvador Cinco began constructing Daku Balay in 1933, finishing it in 1936. According to Lilia, artisans were recruited from all over the Philippines to turn Don Generoso’s vision into reality—stone workers from Romblon and Sorsogon, carpenters and wood carvers from Northern Luzon and metal workers from Negros. “Workers were encamped behind the property. Some brought their families to discourage going on home leaves until the construction was completed,” said Lilia. Aside from using locally procured materials and building with poured concrete, a remarkable feat given the house’s massive size—over 3,000sqm of interior space—Daku Balay also featured art deco details made to last more than a lifetime.

“Furnishings and steel hardware, such as door handles and hinges, were ordered from Puyat furniture makers in Manila,” Lilia said. “The terracotta designs were made from a mixture of sand, stone, crushed shells and paint. The hardwood floors in the living room and the bedrooms were patterned with art deco design, enhanced by different shades of hardwood. The hanging lamps on the hallways were handmade from local materials, as well as the wall sconces.”

Daku Balay held its fair share of lavish soirées during the American era and after the Second World War. Perhaps one of the most frequented spaces for social gatherings in the house was its half-moon-shaped balcony adjacent to the dining room on the ground floor. To describe it as visually striking is an understatement, for it is adorned by double columns, portholes below the ceiling for enhanced ventilation, and a colourful terrazzo floor of geometric patterns. Another good spot is the roof deck right above it, which Craig Scharlin, Lilia’s husband, described as a mini orchestra pit.

“According to family stories, the kitchen operated 24-7 because my grandfather entertained a lot,” Lilia said. “Daku Balay was the focal point of family get-togethers, and Wednesdays and Sundays were open to all family members, including extended families such as neighbours, for lunch and dinner,” she continued. Among the house’s esteemed guest list of politicians were the late President Manuel Roxas and Presidential Secretary Jorge B Vargas.

Related: If Walls Could Talk: A walkthrough of the historic Laperal Mansion

Don Generoso loved animals, Maria Lilia shared, evident in the plaster details of flora and fauna on Daku Balay’s interior walls and ceilings. Lilia, however, remembered stories about her grandfather paying people to bring him wild animals to protect them from getting killed. “He was partial to endangered animals such as hawks, pythons, giant turtles, crocodiles, monkeys, birds large and small, and an emu bird that no one remember where it came from. Eventually, he built Bacolod’s first zoo,” Lilia said.

Aside from the sugarcane plantation, Don Generoso also developed a 30,000-sqm orchard on his childhood property that contained fruits endemic to the island. He also grew rice and developed gardens with native flowers and coconut trees. This passion of Don Generoso for life’s abundance adds depth and meaning to nature’s treasures embedded in Daku Balay’s walls. “On the walls of the second floor, there is a ceiling-high sculptural depiction in plaster of the plants and flowers he grew up with and loved, of a farmer on the back of a carabao, sugarcane stalks and animals,” Lilia described. A tableau of a man with a guitar serenading outside a bahay kubo, another farmer and his wife gazing at the sunset and a sugar mill with smoke billowing from its smokestacks on the horizon easily catches attention. Clearly, Don Generoso’s Daku Balay immortalised the idyllic life of Filipinos during the era of peace in Bacolod; it also reflected his life as a haciendero.

On the third floor, a herd of carabaos was designed above the arched door leading to a bedroom; facing it was a modernist depiction of Don Generoso’s orchard. “This man who loved this Western-style architecture made sure that once inside the house, visitors would not forget that a Filipino owned it and lived here,” said Lilia. “His life and roots were embedded right on the walls.”

It may be fortune’s luck that the Villanueva mansion was spared during the war when it finally reached Negros. The Japanese armed forces occupied the house from 1943 to 1944. Basing it on family lore, Lilia said that Lt Gen Takeshi Kono, head of the Japanese army, was a great admirer of the house’s sophisticated details that he ordered his soldiers not to destroy or vandalise it.

“I remember visiting the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building in New York City after college and thinking, ‘Hmm, the lobby, floors and grills remind me of Lolo’s house in Bacolod,’” Lilia said. “Thus, I embarked on learning about art deco, including the era’s architecture.” For her, Don Generoso’s house is a “burden of joy and legacy”, the title she used for a magazine article she wrote in 2018. “It is a blessing and a privilege to have spent the past decade acting as a steward of the property, and I hope my grandfather’s legacy will live long after his heirs are gone from this earth,” Lilia shared with Tatler.

Among her favourites in the house is the Spider Room, her third-floor office, which she restored upon returning to Bacolod in 2012. It boasts a fascinating coffer on the ceiling designed with a relief of a web with a golden metal spider and fly, has vertical windows punctuated with circular windows atop that all together gather generous amount of light, and has a unicorn embedded in the marble floor’s design.

“I knew this was the room I wanted to spend most of my time because it is a constant reminder of all that was awesome about my Lolo’s vision,” Lilia said.

“Every day, I get to stare at the Hiligaynon folk tales of the Drunken Monkey, the Owl and the Bat, and the Spider and the Fly plastered on the walls and ceilings of my office. In the alcove where I have my grandfather’s 1930s dining table as my conference table, the walls tell the tales of the Aswang Hunter, another favourite folktale popularised in comics throughout Negros in the 1920s,” she added.

When Daku Balay was bestowed the honour of being an Important Cultural Property by the National Museum in 2019, Lilia was so proud. “The prestigious plaque is an honour for my grandfather, for his vision, talent and genius in building this once-in-a-lifetime mansion we call Daku Balay. His heirs are the accidental beneficiaries of this amazing edifice. I believe my Lolo knew that his legacy will be remembered, commemorated and celebrated as a valuable contribution to the cultural history of his beloved island of Negros Occidental,” she said.

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