Sunday, September 24, 2006 A visit to Casa Gorordo By Jenara Regis Newman
The lifestyle museum that is Casa Gorordo was recently reopened to the public after over a year of repairs and restoration. It was a privilege to visit the museum again, in the company of Josefa “Pepit” Revilles who, with her late mother, was the last resident of this, their ancestral home.
According to the National Historical Commission marker, the house was built in the mid-19th century by Alejandro Reynes y Rosales and bought by Juan Isidro Gorordo in 1863. Until it was made a museum, it was home to four generations of Gorordos. Juan married Telesfora Garces and they had seven children: Marcial, Telesfora, Carmen, Jose, Juan and Maria.
Juan became the first Filipino bishop of Cebu. Of his siblings, only Maria and Jose had progeny. Maria married Leoncio Jaen and had one daughter, Telesfora. Jose married Baldomera Galan; they also had an only daughter, Cesarea, she married Margarito Revilles and they had six children: Josefa, Aurora (Yballe), Expedita (Yap), Juan and Gemma (died at ten months) and Alejandro (also deceased).
The Gorordo house sits on 1,410 square meters of land and occupies about a fourth of it. The frontage is about 12 meters and is about 28 meters at its side.
The ground floor was used mainly as bodega for sugar and corn from their farmlands and as a garage for the family car. The upper floor served as living quarters for the family that was so deeply religious they converted one room into a chapel where one Mass was sometimes said.
During the Japanese occupation, it was made into a clubhouse by the invaders to the dismay of Telesfora who had inherited the place. When the Japanese left, she had the whole place blessed. About half of the place, the interior half, was rented by the Bureau of Internal Revenue while the other half was occupied by Telesfora and the Revilles family.
When the BIR left and the Revilles children, except Pepit, had left the place to build homes of their own, only Pepit, her mother and her Mama Teling were left in the house. It was Mama Teling who wanted the house to stay the way it always has, as well as to preserve the rituals associated with the place. She died in 1972 and in 1975, the Aboitizes extended feelers for acquiring the house from the Revilleses with the view of making it into the lifestyle museum that it is today. Pepit and her mother were reluctant to part with the place but when rumors circulated that the powers-that-be wanted it, they reluctantly made arrangements with the Aboitizes for them to acquire the house for the sole purpose of making it into a museum, provided Mrs. Revilles would lie in state in the house upon her death (a wish fulfilled upon her death in 1982).
The Aboitizes have been true to their word. Casa Gorordo Museum first opened its doors to the public in 1983. After a major restoration, it was reopened in August, 2006. The rituals connected with the place have been observed. The carroza and statues of St. John the Baptist baptizing Jesus is used in the Parian San Juan procession. The other carrozas, with Veronica and the Nazarene and, the Muerto de San Jose are used at the Cathedral’s Holy Week procession and are duly decorated by the museum. Sinulog is also always celebrated, a day after the fiesta of the Señor Santo Niño with authentic Sinulog dancers. For a time, the family’s huge Christmas belen was also displayed, but because some of the items of the belen were destroyed, the practice has stopped; hopefully, the items can be replaced and the belen displayed again.
Pepit says some of the original furniture of Casa Gorordo are with her, and there are many items there now that came from other places. But all reflect the lifestyle of an era now gone. According to her, they had a modern bathroom but that has been replaced by a kind of family room now. Additions have been made and a “model” kitchen and toilet and bath have been added to show a lifestyle at the time the house was built, sans modern plumbing.
Going through the house and noting its additions, Pepit remarks she’s happy that the place has been preserved in a way her family could not, which was the dearest wish of her Mama Teling to whom the house had been originally bequeathed. Though she lives somewhere else now, her sense of home will always be Casa Gorordo.
