| Illustration of the front façade and floor plan of the Gabaldon School building of Dr. Celedonio A. Salvador Elementary School (October 2019). The Salvador Elementary School comprise of a building at the center of the school property with its front façade facing north. As an example of a quadrangular layout with central courtyard and has a floor area of 1,760 square meters. The existing building is about fifty-two meters wide and forty-four meters long excluding the front and back stairs. It has been elevated around two meters from the ground. The main building has three large rooms, having a length and width of 9 by 10 meters, respectively. These rooms are interconnected by three cased openings on each wall and currently used as the school library. The east and west side each 6 six classrooms with the standard length of seven meters and width of nine meters. The four corner rooms are larger with 8 meters in length. The south corner room on the east was converted to two restrooms for the students. The south side has 4 classrooms, also 9 meters long and 7 meters wide. |
As we enter the month of June, we remember our time in school but probably never wondered how these common four-walled structures may have been where our elders have also started their formal education.
This article features one of the early schoolhouses in our country.
An adequate, secularized and free public school system was established during the first decade of US American colonization during which schoolhouses were prioritized. It was an essential structure for each community since education was the major focus of their governance by virtue of Philippine Commission Act No. 74 of 1901. These schoolhouses were designed with local factors in mind, such as the country’s tropical climate, the constant earthquake, and the building materials which were easily sourced from different areas.
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