“THE Mansion” is not just a heritage house or any Silay ancestral house that serves as architectural landmark of our Museum City (or City of Museums). This could be a house of friendship, of artistic endeavors, of cultural exhibition, of people (young and old) who want to pass the night with gay laughter, toast of wine, sip for brewed coffee.
It is all that comes to your mind. Those who have been there would always say, “I want to be here to renew friendship with old associates and make new friends or meet future business partners over a mug of beer.” Ladies go here for a light drink and chat about fashion and passion, maybe. The house is cool but very expressive of life loaded with sugar aristocracy, the coat of arms of old Silay.
“The Mansion” is in honor of Adela Ledesma, the “unica hija” of Emilio Ledesma y Ledesma, and Rosario Locsin y Locsin-Ledesma. (You are raising your eyebrows but old Silay royalty was made that way.) We are talking here of the two-storey structure (just like the mansion you saw in the movie “Gone With The Wind”). It was antebellum (existing before the war) architecture designed by Lucio Bernasconi, the Italian architect who also designed San Diego Pro-Cathedral. (Second floor was removed for sentimental reason.)
Adela Ledesma is Adela Ledesma. (She is dead already…sorry to tell you.) There is no one like her in Silay. For me she is the “Dalai Lama” of The Mansion. “The Mansion” has woven a story of love, desire, aspiration, hope and partly of despair. Life is really like that (same with The Mansion). It is checkered with sunshine and shadows. “The Mansion” that was once a center of Silay social life has now recreated a new life after it has metamorphosed to become a butterfly.
Mayor Mark Golez has all the admiration for the house, “This house speaks of culture bygone as it creates new dimensions of what is aesthetic in our generation. It is here where we converge for tourism and the arts.” The mayor was given the honor to cut the ribbon during the opening of “Sculpture and Installations” by artist Moreen Austria.
Moreen has expressed the connectivity of her artwork with Adela’s Mansion… the gown that speaks of lavish parties, the “terno” that the gentlemen of old used to boast while flirting with ladies, and oh, the suit cases that the old Silaynons used while having world tours after the milling season. “The Mansion” saw politicians and pseudo politicians who used sugar to pump themselves up.
With “Ledesma y Locsin” in string, the economy of Silay was well protected. It was in that era when zarzuela was in bloom. It was the period when Silay’s wealth was without a time zone. Those years were spent by Silay “solteros” in hunting for Manila “colegialas” who swallowed hook, line, and sinker because of the sugar bait and the color of sugar money.
Come to “The Mansion” and have a glimpse of the photo gallery where beautiful models accented their alluring gifts with the vintage of the past. Go around the house and see the pictures of what sugar has made of Silay. The “balconaje” reflects of Adela’s warmth (in spirit) is welcoming visitors as she saw herself as one of them coming to “The Mansion” to experience what she never felt.
“The Mansion” is loaded with urban legends as guests make them happen at Pitong Ledesma Street. Like the “Legend of Sleepy Hallow,” it sleeps from Monday until Thursday but stays awake on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays (starting from four o’clock in the afternoon). What happens until midnight is up for you to discover. You may find your Cinderella or your Sleeping Beauty beneath the huge portrait of Señorita Adela.
On October 31, “The Mansion” will point out to you (just across the road) the Halloween attraction where the living undead dwell, the mansion of Daniel Golez (residence of the late Mayor Romulo Golez). The Christian Community Theater of Silay in making it the “House of Asher” (Edgar Allan Poe). Come (for a fee) and scream! That is “The Mansion” and beyond. Know more what is beyond.