Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar is a sprawling property from over 400 hectares in the midst of Bagac, Bataan, Philippines. An open-air museum and heritage resort consisting of 128 guest rooms and 63 elite casas, Las Casas is a restored piece of history saved from total ruin and neglect. Currently, the property has four major restaurants including Cusina ni Nanay Maria, Café Marivent, Café Del Rio, and La Bella Teodora. It also features a beach, a batis-inspired swimming pool, and a man-made estero.
Location
Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar is nestled at Barangay Ibaba, Bagac, Bataan.
History and description
Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar is a reconstructed 18th-century Filipino settlement that showcases the best of Filipino heritage and culture through the colorful stories as retold by Jose “Jerry” Acuzar’s collection of restored Spanish-Filipino houses. One of the successful projects of New San Jose Builders, Incorporated, Las Casas opened its doors to the public in 2010 – almost seven years after owner Acuzar started rebuilding Spanish colonial-era mansions in his sprawling property. Each of the Filipino-Spanish houses were dismantled brick-by-brick, numbered, transported to the Bagac site, and were re-assembled and restored. For parts that were missing, Las Casas craftsmen replicated the original structure. Aside from the architectural treats, Las Casas commissions a total of 148 artisans from dying art industries and houses their respective families inside the Bataan sprawl. These craftsmen hail from different parts of the country – including Romblon, Laguna, Pampanga, even Bataan and Manila.
Heritage houses
Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar contains 30 heritage houses.
Casa Balayan 1 from Batangas
Casa Balayan 2 from Batangas
Casa Balanga from Bataan
Casa Baliuag 1 -. The house contains wood carvings with floral motifs. The original owner of Casa Baliwag was Kapitan Fernando Vergel de Dios and Doña Carmen De Leon; it was inherited by their eldest daughter, Juliana VD Reyes. It was originally across the town's San Agustín Church. Family members fondly called it "Luwasan" since it was the house referred to when going towards the town or to Manila. Kapitan Fernando had another house called "Hulo", which was going towards the "dulo" or end of town.
Casa Baliuag 2 - originally in the compound of Iglesia ni Cristo in Baliuag. It was owned by a González.
Casa Biñan - is a partial replica of the house of Teodora Alonso, the mother of national hero José Rizal. Acuzar used the original wooden door, stairs and a few planks when he recreated it. He abandoned the planned donation of the house by its current owner, Gerardo Alberto, after new broke out regarding his planned acquisition of the heritage house. Hundreds protested his acquisition, while numerous heritage groups called the acquisition a "tragedy" in heritage conservation. The original house has been 'gutted', as half have been transported to Las Casas.
Casa Bizantina – is a three-storey, intricately designed bahay na bato from Binondo, Manila. The Instituto de Manila once rented it for elementary and high school classes until 1919, when the school moved to Sampaloc, Manila. After World War II, the building was leased to tenants, who later gave way to a squatters' colony before the building was demolished in 2009.
Casa Cagayan -a collection of four wooden houses built on stilts. Such houses were usually regarded as those of poor people in Cagayan in the early 1900s.
Casa Candaba - was home to the Spanish Governor-General whenever he visited Pampanga.
Casa Hidalgo - was the first campus of the University of the Philippines’ School of Fine Arts, of which its owner Rafael Enríquez was the first director. Thence, it has housed the first school of architecture in the country, a bowling alley, a dormitory, and flesh joint.
Casa Jaen 1 and 2 - Two houses from Jaen, Nueva Ecija, originally owned by the Esquivel clan. Casa Jaen 1, also known as the Don Hilario Esquivel House, was built in the 1900s and won the House Beautiful Award in 1917 by the Sunday Tribune.
Casa Lubao - served as a storehouse for rice and sugar, and became a Japanese garrison during World War II. A story goes that a Japanese colonel stopped his men from burning the house out of gratitude to the Arastia family, who had unknowingly hired him as a driver and gardener before the war.
Casa Luna - houses a museum. Built in 1850, its original location was in Namacpacan. The town was renamed to honour revolutionaries and brothers Antonio and Juan Luna, whose mother was a daughter of the Novicio clan.
Casa Mexico - salvaged from a junk shop and reconstructed based on an old photograph.
Casa Meycauayan - was built in the City of San Fernando in Pampanga. It was rebuilt in the 1950s in Meycauayan, Bulacan, where Rogelio Urrutia bought it.
Paseo de Escolta – used old and new material to recreate commercial buildings in the early 1900s in Manila. With 17 rooms, it houses a hotel and shops.
Casa Unisan - is the Maxino house in Unisan, Quezon. It is made of hardwood complete with trapdoors. Only one girl survived the massacre of the family and that tragedy makes the house much talked about not only for its beauty. Its ground floor is now the hotel's Marivent Café, which serves Filipino food.
Controversy
The management of the resort has been criticized many times in the past due to the nature of its acquisition of heritage structures. Many of the heritage houses, like the bahay-na-bato and torogan, have been acquired by the resort, and transported to its current location, putting away the essential geographic and cultural value of those house to each of the structure’s original domains. Outrage have erupted when the management tried to get the ancestral house of national hero, Jose Rizal, from Calamba before. Half of the building was taken, leaving the half in Calamba. Numerous heritage groups called it a "tragedy" in heritage conservation. Another controversy is the acquisition of two torogons, or royal Maranao houses in Lanao. The torogans were supposedly on track to become one of the properties of a UNESCO inclusion in the Tentative List, but the inclusion was cut short due to Las Casas intervention and eventual acquisition of the royal houses, which it eventually took piece by piece and transported to Bataan. The indigenous Maranao peoples of Lanao del Sur have been campaigning for the return of the two torogons to their ancestral lands.
