Here and There

By July 15, 2008Archives, Opinion

The ‘auditorium’ and the capital

By Gerry Garcia

Two outstanding landmarks of Luzon’s biggest province, Pangasinan, stand on the coast of Lingayen town which faces its historic Lingayen Gulf: the Sison Auditorium and the Pangasinan Provincial Capitol. While these two withered the years in admirable endurance and stand out as the town’s beckoning spots of attraction, tourists and visitors were beginning to get more interested and more investors had come in to face the challenge of business investments.

Fact is Mayor Castañeda’s hometown has become more alive and kicking today because of this. Jollibee and Chowking are among the first to take the bait.

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Guv Espino has launched the first step in sprucing up the capitol grounds and in fact moved to transfer the provincial administration center from the Urduja House to where it should be in the first place – the provincial capitol.

The provincial capitol, built in 1919, was a brain-child of then Provincial Gov. Daniel Maramba after whom the well laid out, tree-lined boulevard leading to the capitol, was named-Maramba Boulevard. It was Governor Maramba who procured for the province the capitol site, laid out the spacious park fronting the capitol.

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The late Board Member Roberto O. Ferrer Jr., had reminiscences of the historic Sison Auditorium. The auditorium, he said, was named after Teofilo Sison, two-term governor of the province from 1922 to 1928. Originally, Bob said, the auditorium was built as part of the Pangasinan Academic High School complex-the province’s first secondary school. (If we remember right, it was at the PAHS that the Punch’s late editor founder, Ermin Garcia, Sr. had his first secondary schooling.)

The Sison Auditorium, Ferrer wrote (quoting the late historian Dr. Baldomero Pulido) was first called “Assembly Hall” – the main building of the Pangasinan Academic High School. School authorities later named the main building Sison Auditorium in honor of Gov. Teofilo Sison, Jr.

Since its completion, the Sison Auditorium was the site of major social functions in the province, like the reception and ball held on Nov. 22, 1939 in honor of the man it was named after. Sison was the first Pangasinense to become cabinet member during Pres. Manuel Quezon’s administration in 1928, first as Secretary of Interior and Labor and later, Secretary of Justice and National Defense.

(Readers may reach columnist at sundaypunch2@yahoo.com. For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/here-and-there/ For reactions to this column, click “Send MESSAGES, OPINIONS, COMMENTS” on default page.)

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