Photo of the Batangas Provincial Building [January 1914, BPW Quarterly Bulletin]

This photograph is part of a series showing construction projects undertaken by the Bureau of Public Works during the American colonial era. All photographs have been digitally extracted from the Quarterly Bulletins of the bureau.

The January 1914 edition of the Quarterly Bulletin describes the provincial building in the then-town of Batangas as “probably the finest looking capitol, architecturally, of the Spanish regime...” The first floor of the building was described as being of “adobe masonry quarried in the immediate vicinity” while the second floor was constructed with native hardwoods.

This capitol building was said “to be located in the present business center of the town (Batangas) and just to its east was “a magnificent stone church which lends itself to the general scheme and gives a sense of pleasure to one entering the town from the north or west.”

¹ “Bureau of Public Works Quarterly Bulletin, Volume 2 No. 4,” compiiled by C.A. Tansill, published January 1914 in Manila by the Bureau of Public Works.