'Endangered Splendor,' the book

APROPOS on the catastrophe that befell the Manila Central Post Office building, I decided to look over a book that about 10 days before the fire at the Post Office, won the Alfonso T. Ongpin Prize at the National Book Awards for the best book on art published in 2022. (Disclosure: Alfonso T. Ongpin was my late husband's grandfather and I happened to give the prize last May 13 at the Metropolitan Theater, a heritage building that has been restored.) The book is "Endangered Splendor, Volume 1: The Center," by Fernando N. Zialcita and Erik Akpedonu with Victor S. Venida, published by the Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU) Press.

"Endangered Splendor" is the first part of a planned three-volume series on heritage structures in the city of Manila. It is Ateneo's cultural inventory of heritage structures in the city. Its subtitle is "The Center," for it makes a cultural inventory of the heritage structures in Intramuros, Binondo, San Nicolas and Tondo, where Manila as a city began.