Postcards of Old Manila at the Rizal Library

«It was a time of great change for the Philippines,» writes author and avid postcard collector Jonathan Best of the turn of the last century.

With the opening of the Manila Hotel in 1912 the tourist industry officially began and both foreigners and locals bought and sent hundreds of thousands of postcards. From Mountain Province and Luzon, to the Visayas the whole nation was suddenly on display, he says.

These days, hardly anyone spares the time to send a postcard. The idea of a postcard fad may seem strange now, but over one hundred years ago, it swept the world. Portable cameras, cheap postal rates and the birth of international tourism set the stage for hand colored picture postcards, which eventually made their appearance in the Philippines.

Best writes that the phenomenon coincided with the arrival of thousands of American military personnel and colonial administrators in the Philippines in 1898. Eager to bring their memories back home, they became a ready market for Philippine postcards.

Photographers would take black and white pictures of the Philippines’ most famous landmarks, beautiful and exotic sights. Then they would transform these images into color postcards by applying hand-made lithographic plates for the color. Best notes that these were the days before movies, television or even color photography.

A small collection of these old picture postcards was preserved in the Rafel Ortigas Jr. collection, and is currently on exhibit at the Rizal Library Special Collections Building at Ateneo de Manila University.

«Postcards from Our Past» attempts to show what life was like at the end of the Spanish era in the Philippines and the first years of the American period — when Intramuros was a center of activity, its Spanish walls and gates intact and its many churches and ancient convents still standing. Beyond the walls of Intramuros, business flourished in Binondo and on the Escolta.

Hand coloured postcards with views of Manila

Source: GMA News