Heritage advocates are concerned over the possible demolition of the 109-year-old Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Santa Cruz, Manila, which was designed by American architect William F. Parsons more than a century ago.
Data from the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) indicates that four of eight buildings of the hospital are no longer safe.
“It is more expensive to retrofit the existing Fabella buildings than to build a modern and bigger national maternity hospital that can efficiently and safely serve the health care needs of pregnant women and newborns,” said Health Secretary Paulyn Jean Rosell-Ubial, who backing the planned demolition.
Fabella Hospital started out as six-bed capacity clinic before it was transferred to its current location in 1951. The 109-year-old building which houses the hospital used to be part of the Bilibid prison.
According to architect and author Gerard Lico, Fabella Hospital is more than 100 years old, and it qualifies as a “presumed important cultural property under the National Heritage Law of 2009”, Philippine Daily Inquirer reports.
Heritage Conservation Society president Ivan Anthony Henares also said his group is opposed to the demolition.
“A modern hospital can always be built incorporating the heritage building and without altering its character,” he said.
Henares said that DOH should coordinate with national cultural agencies to save the Parsons building.
