Quezon City - Master Plans

Master Plans

In 1938, President Quezon made a decision to push for a new capital city. Manila was getting crowded, and his military advisors (reportedly) told him that Manila, being by the bay, was an easy target for bombardment by naval guns in case of attack, a real possibility in the late 1930s.

Of course, military advisers did not anticipate bombing from the air. Nevertheless, Quezon railroaded the idea of a totally new city at least 15 km away from Manila Bay (beyond the reach of naval guns). He contacted William E. Parsons, American architect and planner, who had been the consulting architect for the islands early in the American colonial period. Parsons came over in the summer of 1939 and helped select the Diliman (Tuason) estate as the site for the new city. Unfortunately he passed away later that year. His partner Harry Frost took over. Frost collaborated with Juan Arellano, engineer AD Williams and landscape architect/planner Louis Croft to craft a grand master plan for the new capital, Quezon City.

The plan was approved by the Philippine authorities in 1941. The core of the new city was to be a 400 ha central green, about the size of New York's Central Park, and defined by North, South (Timog), East and West Avenues. On one corner of the proposed Diliman Quadrangle was delineated a 25-hectare elliptical site. This was to contain a large capitol building to house the Philippine Legislature and ancillary structures for the offices of representatives.

On either side of the giant ellipse were supposed to have been built the new Malacañan Palace, on the North Avenue(present day Veterans Memorial Hospital), and the Supreme Court Complex, on the East Avenue(present day East Avenue Medical Center). The three branches of government would finally and efficiently be located close to one another.