Transcendence and The Times’ buildings

WHILE The Manila Times’ editorial and administrative departments have only occupied the red-bricked Sitio Grande building in Intramuros, Manila these last seven years, the journey to this present location still holds a special place in the newspaper’s rich history.

As the nation’s oldest English-language daily broadsheet, The Manila Times has naturally had many homes in its 119 years of existence. Former Times journalist Luis Serrano, in his book “History of The Manila Times,” writes that Thomas Gowan—an Englishman who had lived in the Philippines for some time before finally publishing the newspaper in 1989 to meet the demands of Americans in Manila for information—first hired Chofre y Compania, a small printing press, to put out the paper. The press was located on Calle Alix, now Legarda Street in Sampaloc, Manila, while the paper opened its downtown office in Escolta, effectively considered The Manila Times’ first home.