Exploiting some unconventional way not to be bored, we went to Ruins in Talisay City and took photographs of the facade. Probably one of the biggest and the most luxurious residential structure built during its time, this was owned by sugar baron Don Mariano Ledesma Lacson year 1911. It is of Italianate architecture with neo-Romanesque columns. In New England, they often were homes to ship captains with shell-like crowns around the top of the mansion. The structure met its sad fate in the early World War II when the USAFFE (United States Armed Forces in the Far East), then the guerilla fighters, burnt the mansion to prevents the Japaneses forces from utilizing it as their headquarters or garrison. They initially poured 3 drums of gasoline to ignite the solid wooden floors but nothing happened, until they mixed 2 drums of gasoline with 4 drums of used oil and poured the mixture onto the floor of the mansion. The whole mansion was burning for 3 days which consumed all the floors, the ceiling and the roof. Despite the inferno it underwent, bringing down the roof and the solid wooden floors, the structure has withstood the ravages of the time mainly due to the oversized steel bars and the A-grade mixture of concrete used in it construction.

Source: Unkown

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