The Ocampo Pagoda: A Tour Inside Quiapo's Mysterious Architectural Gem

(SPOT.ph) No one knows what chaos is until they’ve been to Quiapo. Parts of it resemble other locales— for example, the tightly knit houses, the tangled electrical wires, the unswept streets. However, no place else looks quite like the crowded, frenetic historic mishmash of cultures that is this ever hustling district at the geographical heart of Manila.

Right outside the famed Quiapo Church, you have the frenzied crowds along Hidalgo Street’s optical and camera shops, with stalls selling everything from hearty eats and palengke goods to folk medicine and traditional handicrafts crammed in between. The historic Quinta Market is a stone’s throw away, and if you walk farther, you’ll find yourself among stalls selling embellished long dresses in the Muslim Quarter, not far from the shining Golden Mosque.

Keep an eagle eye out, and you’ll spot forgotten bahay na bato houses from the Spanish era standing wearily next to sari-sari stores and new condominiums. Look even harder while you’re strolling down old Z.P. De Guzman Street, and you might think you’re hallucinating when you see a castle turret right out of a fairytale emerge into view over rough-hewn homes, old trees, and a dirty estero.

Hustle over to an eskinita round the corner, and you’ll see that the five-storey Medieval tower complete with arrow slits and crenellations isn’t just a tower. It’s connected to a Japanese castle, with sloping roofs, a Shinto gate motif, and stone walls at its base. Except, no, it can’t be a Japanese castle: not with all those carved dragons and Chinese-style circle windows with decorative grilles.

Is it a temple? An old lookout tower? Neither. Officially, it is a boarding house for seafarers and transient workers. A very reasonably-priced one, too, with rates going as low as P155 per night for small, clean rooms interestingly named after countries around the world.

But in another life and in a very different Quiapo, this was the Ocampo Pagoda Mansion. Not a family home, but the architectural wonderland and air raid shelter of Jose Mariano de los Reyes Ocampo.

Born and raised in Quiapo, Jose Mariano de los Reyes Ocampo was a realtor and an art collector. As his living family today will be the first to tell you, he was also an eccentric born to parents who were eccentrics themselves. And he had a not-so-simple dream: to build a grand office inspired by a Japanese Castle.

Quiapo in the early 1900s they say was more akin to today’s Forbes Park, and Ocampo’s fascination with Japan started when he became pals with his neighbor, a Japanese consul. Ocampo would end up not only speaking the language fluently, but even producing a Spanish-Japanese dictionary himself. And his love wouldn’t stop there.

“When his father died in 1935, my lolo embarked on this project the next year: his pagoda,” recounts Ramona "Rona" Abundo, his granddaughter and one of the mansion’s current owners. She dons a brown scapular: like her grandfather, she’s faithful to the Lady of Mount Carmel.

“He was not an architect or engineer,” she continues, “but he read a lot of books about Japanese gardens and European castles. He put it all together, wanting it to be sturdy and beautiful. And if the engineers didn’t like it, he’d just say, ‘Well, if you don’t agree with me, goodbye.’”

If “my way or the highway” was given physical form, it might look very much like the Ocampo Pagoda Mansion. When engineers would recommend Class A concrete, Ocampo would use AA instead. While Manila was embracing Art Deco and modernism in the 1930s, he built a European tower with a Japanese castle wrapped around it completely covered with Buddhist imagery. And beyond that, the mansion overlooked over a thousand square meters of garden decorated with a 10-meter-high pagoda, as well as statues of nudes and Chinese scholars. There was even a pond with a Chinese-style infinity bridge, punctuated by lilypad-shaped stepping stones the young Rona herself would hop onto with her siblings.

“It was an expression of what he thought was beautiful,” Rona puts simply. “But my lolo was such an introvert: he didn’t tell us anything about these symbols. So all these secrets were locked in his mind for 70 years and even beyond, to his tomb, because he never told us.”

Look beyond the grandiose structure, and you’ll spot small, extremely deliberate details. Ocampo’s name, for example, is all over the estate: built into the grilles of windows by the entrance, written in katakana (O-ka-mu-po and Re-ye-su) on the front doors, and even engraved into the roof tiles.

The Western-style turret has different carvings on each side: a crane for happiness, a dragon for good luck, a tortoise for long life, and a wrathful Tantric Buddhist deity to chase away evil. Going up the stairs inside, the railings are marked by finials designed like Tibetan prayer wheels. Rooster statues crow for good luck on the sloped roofs beside Japanese shachihoko and onigawara, while about 20 carved water dragons hang beneath to bring peace. There’s a section of roof where the tiles resemble dragon scales, Chinese-style railings calling for wealth, and even an awning with a carving of a silkworm with a mulberry leaf.

Rona and her family would discover the meanings behind all these symbols not from her grandfather, but from visiting academics and experts like noted anthropologist Butch Zialcita and heritage photographer A. Chester Ong.

“[Ong] even brought a flute to find out if there were spirits here, and he said there were, but they’re good and here to ward off the bad,” recounts Rona.

For all its beauty and the sheer nostalgia of her childhood spent visiting every week however, Rona does not sidestep around the fact that the Ocampo Mansion was designed and built to be an architectural folly: a decorative structure with no real functional/practical purpose. Ocampo had no plans of leaving the bahay-na-bato he lived in just around the corner.

“When [Butch Zialcita] told me this is an architectural folly, I was mortified thinking that the pagoda my lolo loved was this useless thing he built,” says Rona. “But you know, God was kind to my lolo: He justified [the pagoda] twice.” 

The pagoda would never be the office Ocampo envisioned it to be, but it would save people’s lives. Constructed over five years, it was finally completed in 1941. And if you know your history, you'd know this year ended terribly for the Philippines: with the Japanese invading Manila not even 24 hours after bombing Pearl Harbor.

As the Japanese began commandeering homes and turning out the families living in them, Ocampo was afraid that his pagoda would meet the same fate. He started telling neighbors to take shelter from air raids in its high-grade concrete (take that, naysaying engineers!) before eventually inviting nearly 30 families to occupy it. True enough, the Japanese did eventually come.

“The Japanese commandant said, ‘We have to commandeer the pagoda,” recounts Rona, “And my lolo, in fluent Japanese, told them, ‘Oh, but there’s too many people here.’ Sure enough, they didn’t kick everyone out—but they did take over my lolo’s bahay-na-bato instead, so he lived here in the lobby level with some other friends.”

It would again save their lives a few years later, coming out of Manila’s Liberation (see: bombing) intact. Grateful that much of the Quiapo he loved wasn’t completely destroyed, he would commission one of the final additions to the estate: a 30-foot-tall statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel sitting on a globe. Named “Ina ng Mundo,” it was sculpted by Graciano Nepomuceno and painted by Anastacio Caedo, built in the garden to face the main altar of the nearby San Sebastian Church.

The families occupying the mansion eventually left, and it returned to being a wonder for the Ocampo family and grandchildren to enjoy for decades. But it would irrevocably change in 1979, when Ocampo began hearing whispers of the land possibly being confiscated by the Marcos administration. Rona recounts, “We were all having lunch in my grandparents’ house around the bend, like we did every Saturday, when my lolo ran up the stairs, two at a time. Then he said, ‘I did it: I bulldozed the pagoda garden.’”

“He bulldozed it,” Rona repeats, almost as if still in disbelief. “And then he subdivided the Ocampo compound along ZP De Guzman into many smaller lots and sold it for cheap. He did it all so that it wouldn’t be confiscated. He just did whatever he wanted to do, and we felt so sad because we felt that he had destroyed a piece of himself—though of course he was probably proud of what he did.”

There would be no coming back from the loss of the garden, with little houses now occupying the areas where the pond and pagoda had been. “Ina ng Mundo” would remain in the area now called the Ocampo Compound, hidden out of sight by the walls of other homes until it was finally moved to the National Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Quezon City decades later.

But one of the biggest blows to the mansion was the infamous 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Luzon on July 16, 1990: the oriental-styled roof at the top of the tower toppled over and crushed an empty truck parked below. Peering down from the turret, you can see exactly where it crashed into the borders of the lower roof. The hole is still there, almost as if a giant rat had gnawed at the roof’s edges. 

At this point, the pagoda had already been passed down to Rona’s mother and aunt, and it wouldn’t be long before it was transformed into the New Pagoda Boarding House operating in Quiapo today.

The family would install a new metal roof over the turret to prevent water from getting into the house; build a new steel veranda with proper rooms to accommodate boarders; close off the top of the high-ceilinged master’s bedroom; paint over brightly-colored finials with white; and build bathrooms and relaxation areas right next to the building. When it was passed down to Rona herself, more fire exits were added for safety, as well as a carinderia and a small hall outdoors with metal grating to shield boarders from roof tiles that are beginning to fall off.

At 85 years old, the pagoda certainly looks like it has seen its share of terrible things. It has been both a witness and a participant in history as it unfolded, all from its quiet corner in Quiapo. Despite the proud artistry of its design, its symbology, and its incredible structural integrity, the hole in the roof remains. The once-pristine paint is fading and coated with the grime of the years. A nearby balete tree threatens to dig its roots into concrete.

“A [contractor] told me it would take two million pesos just to fix the roof,” says Rona. “I don’t have two million pesos. Who will give me that?”

A Senate Bill was recently filed to create a Quiapo heritage zone that would safeguard all its historical sites—but with Philippine lawmaking being what it is and the City of Manila increasing its garbage collection fees for businesses by a whopping 1,200%, Rona and her family are diligently searching for new ways to keep the place afloat. That said, after accepting only family and boarders, it is now allowing visits.

“We’re open,” Rona declares. As of writing, she’s set up a small gallery (pictured above, with blessedly powerful air-conditioning) detailing the history of the building and the Ocampo family through the decades. Renacimiento Manila now includes the Ocampo Pagoda Mansion in its guided walking tours of Quiapo.

Those interested in just a guided tour through the entire mansion however, need only book ahead: it’s P1,800 for a group of 10 people and below. And with that, you can view paintings from Ocampo’s art collection, enter secret rooms built for seclusion (these came in handy during the pandemic), and even climb all 122 steps up the tower for a 360° view of Manila that includes the Golden Mosque, San Sebastian Church, and even Manila City Hall.

Visits alone may not assure the Ocampo Pagoda Mansion will keep standing for more years and preserve its remaining allure , but continued conversation may. Much that once was is now lost—and they disappear faster when there are none alive to remember them. Historic streets get new names under some political agenda. Illustrious neighborhoods give way to war and poverty, becoming a maze of small houses. Heritage buildings are demolished by indifferent local government and money-hungry real estate developers. 

Places that are cherished remain. And when they do, they reveal something about the maker, the people who lived their lives in them. In one man’s pagoda, we see symbols praying for health and good fortune, for a future where his family always has somewhere safe to stay and he is remembered—and these have all endured the decades by design. By the love of those who remember it dearly.

In Quiapo, people make ends meet in markets and dusty streets, pray in a historic church and a golden mosque, and persevere in the chaos. When we are unable to marvel at the miracles still standing that survived war and destruction, what does that tell us of Manila? What does it tell us of our selves?

The Ocampo Pagoda Mansion is located at 844 Gonzalo Puyat St, Quiapo, Manila. Quiapo is the old City Center, and the Pagoda is only one of its curiosities. For a well guided tour, call +639692171437 or phone the pagoda to reserve a slot at 09564328180. Fee for booking is P1800 for 10 people and below, but look out for future promos. For more information, visit the Pagoda Quiapo Museum on Facebook by clicking the link.