Smith, Bell & Co.: House of trade, history and poetry

A century-old, Spanish-style house of stone and capiz shell windows in Tabaco City in Albay looks as illustrious as its former occupant, Angela Manalang-Gloria, regarded as the “matriarch” of Filipino women poets in English.

It was doubly significant, therefore, when the National Historical Institute unveiled two markers at the Manalang-Gloria ancestral home near the city’s international port.

Sitting on a 3,700-square-meter property, the house was built in the early 1900s by a wealthy Bicolano, Don Mariano Villanueva. It was considered one of the most beautiful houses of its kind in the country.