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A building in Sta Cruz, Manila, that used to be the office of The Manila Times in the mid-1940s has been restored and is now being rented out as residential apartments.
Not a lot is known about this Neo-Gothic building on Florentino Torres Street other than it was already around before the 1940s.
The new owner, GSMS Property Holding, has kept some of the original architectural details — exterior lamps and carved gables above the entrances, the inner courtyard, original windows in some of the rooms — as well as the building’s original name, TVT.
TVT Building’s hallway — the upper three floors have 12 units per floor.
Natural light pours into the rooms thanks to generous-sized windows.
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TVT stands for the three main publications of Don Alejandro Roces — Tribune, La Vanguardia and Taliba. He was publishing these titles before acquiring The Manila Times, the nation’s oldest existing English language daily, from its British owner before the war.
After the war Don Alejandro’s son Joaquin “Chino” took over the company. Among the changes he instituted was to drop Tribune from the company’s portfolio in favor of The Manila Times. From TVT, the corporation was renamed The Manila Times Publishing Co.
TVT’s ground floor tenants are mostly electrical supplies shops. The upper three floors have been converted into 36 apartments or twelve units per floor. Sizes range from 27sqm 76sqm, with an average value of PHP250 per sqm. Each unit has one bathroom. A one-bedroom starts at PHP12,000, while a two-bedroom ranges from PHP15,000 to PHP18,000, and a three-bedroom is anywhere from PHP18,000 to PHP24,000.
When we called in Feb 2016, the administrator said they still had plenty of units available.
There are no modern amenities like a gym or a pool, and tenants have to sort out their own cable and WiFi connections but it does offer one thing that modern buildings can’t: a slice of history.
Before newspapers transferred their offices to the Port Area, they were either along Escolta, in Binondo or Sta Cruz. On Florentino Torres Street, where TVT is located, were International News Service and Associated Press, Daily Mirror and Bulletin, according to a member of the Facebook group Manila Nostalgia, who says he got the information from the novelist F. Sionil Jose and late statesman Blas Ople. The Evening Press was on CM Recto Street (then Azcarraga), Free Press was on Rizal Avenue, and the Roces magazine group (Liwayway, Bannawag, Bisaya) was on Soler Street.
“Even during those days, Manila was already dangerous,” he says. “That’s why young journalists like Ople (Manila Times) and Ninoy Aquino (Manila Times) were allowed to carry .45 caliber pistols. Attorney and future Manila mayor Arsenio H. Lacson of Philippine Liberty News also went around with a revolver.
“I walked into this building in April 1963, knocked on the door of the Women’s Magazine office, and bravely told the lady at the desk that I wanted to be a writer,” recounts journalist Sol Vanzi on the Facebook group Manila Nostalgia. “She agreed to test me with an assignment, which I submitted (a week later) on yellow pad, in long hand. (I did not know how to type.) She published the whole thing without any changes. I found out later she was Ms. Luisa Linsangan, the editor-in-chief. 14 years later, I asked her to be Ninang at my wedding.”
“Spent a few years of my youth with the Sunday Times Variety, with the late Joe Quirino as editor,” recalls Carlos Quinto. “Across the TVT building was a restaurant (theTimes didn’t have a canteen yet) aptly called Newsmen’s Hangout. A friend [Tino Dauz] married the restaurant owner’s daughter.”
TVT Building, 592 Florentino Torres St, Sta Cruz, Manila; +63 2 7350279
TVT Building on Florentino Torres Street in Manila’s downtown area was quietly restored into an apartment building this year.
The wide staircase is a reminder of how space was not such a precious commodity before the 1940s.
Vintage outdoor lighting at TVT Building.
Photos: Anson Yu
