Las Piñas Gabaldon Hall
| Las Piñas Gabaldon Hall | |
|---|---|
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| Location | |
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Diego Cera Avenue, Elias Aldana, Las Piñas Philippines |
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| Information | |
| Type | Single Detached / Freestanding |
| Established | Between 1907 - 1916 |
| Founder | Engr. Edgar K. Bourne |
| Status | Used as a Division Office (formerly used as a school building) |
| Campus | Las Piñas Elementary School Central |
| Affiliation | Department of Education |
The Las Piñas Gabaldon Hall is an old school building in Las Piñas located in the campus of the Las Piñas Central Elementary School in Metro Manila, Philippines.
In 1898, the Americans established and institutionalized the Department of Education in the Philippines. Because the Americans wanted to educate the Filipinos as well as to make it easier for them to transmit their ideas of colonization, it is best to teach the people how to speak English. Moreover, Americans wanted to train Filipinos good citizenship & governance in order to prepare them as independent & self-sufficient people.
When the Americans came in the 19th Century, one of their primary goals is to establish the education system in the Philippines. The first big delegation of educators arrived in a ship called Thomas and that’s why the foreign educators were famously known as the Thomasites.
Schools must be provided to facilitate the education of the Filipinos. There were existing 534 schools constructed by the Spaniards and the Americans added 1,000 more school buildings & it had steadily grew in the first 10 years. They have adopted three kinds of school buildings, the barrio school, the municipal school, and the group of high school buildings.
Starting 1900s, they built sturdier schoolhouses that later known as American Colonial Schools. American architect William E. Parsons was commissioned to develop prototype designs for the schoolhouses. There were twenty prototypes made that varies from one classroom to more than ten classrooms. Prototypes were designed also for elementary schools and high schools.
In 1907, Assemblyman Isauro Gabaldon allotted a budget of one million pesos (sixty thousand dollars) for the construction of theses prototypes all over the Philippines. These schools were later known as "Gabaldon Schools".
With the growth of population in Las Piñas, the demand for education is also rising. Starting out from a single gabaldon school, it led to the construction of several buildings and facilities within the complex. It includes multi-storey classroom building, H.E. building, motorpool, guard houses, service area, additional offices; as well as a track oval and a multi-purpose hall.
Reminiscent of the early years of the American occupation, Las Piñas Elementary School’s Gabaldon Hall is one of the survivors of the city’s rapid development. The design was named after a former Nueva Ecija congressman, Isauro Gabaldon, who introduced a law in 1907 that appropriated funds for the construction of school buildings nationwide.
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Wikipedia