Photo of the Batangas Provincial Administration Building [July 1914 BPW Quarterly Bulletin]

This photograph is part of a series showing mostly construction projects undertaken by the Bureau of Public Works during the American colonial era. All photographs have been digitally extracted from the Quarterly Bulletins of the bureau and processed using graphics editing software to improve quality. It goes without saying that the eventual output of each extract was always going to be dependent on the quality of the original scan.

At the turn of the 20^th century, the new American colonial government started an aggressive infrastructure construction program in the Philippines. This program included the construction of roads, a rail system, school and public buildings. The bulk of the construction fell upon the shoulders of the Bureau of Public Works.

In the case of public buildings, the bureau, in its July 1914 Quarterly Bulletin, acknowledged that many such buildings constructed during the Spanish era were still in existence in Batangas at the time and described these as “conclusive evidence of an early period of prosperity” under Spanish rule.

Among these was the Batangas Provincial Administration Building, shown in the photograph below. About this building, the bureau had to say:

The Batangas Provincial Administration Building. Image digitally extracted from the July 1914 edition of the Bureau of Public Works Quarterly Bulletin.