“We look before and after, and pine for what is not”

"As a premiere accommodation for visitors from the lowlands, Pines Hotel came to be known as an important landmark of Baguio as a colonial hill station. It had served as a symbol of the northern Philippine city known for its cool climate, fog, and conifer trees. 

Hotel Pines was first converted from the Baguio Sanitarium on what became Governor Pack Road. After the war, it was rebuilt at a higher location, on Luneta Hill. The hotel struggled with maintenance and ownership issues in
the 1950s until it burned down in 1984, and on its site bloomed weeds and wild flowers before a commercial mall opened there in 2003.

The fate of Pines Hotel mirrors that of Baguio, a city
largely shaped by commercial forces. Today Baguio faces issues like
congestion, overpopulation, and environmental degradation. Its citizens call for the city to be recognized as a national heritage."

"1. Baguio Memories

Since the Philippine Commission proclaimed Baguio as “the summer capital” of the Philippines in 1903, it has always been a favorite vacation place for tourists. The Swiss citizen, Lisa Amman-Irminger, whose father and uncle worked in the Philippines in the early 1900s, remembers playing in the garden and park of Pines Hotel where her mother took charge of the housekeeping."

"Today nostalgic discussions of Baguio abound in blogs, web forums, social media, books, yearbooks, and newspapers. “Old-timers” and non-locals bewail the loss of the cold, the fog, the smell of pine trees and the pine trees themselves, as well as the closing of familiar haunts. But as long-time Baguio resident and writer, Grace Celeste T. Subido, writes:

“Baguio's persistence is certain, not because it will be patronized by those for whom it has, at one point or another, succeeded merely in the gratification of some transient desire. Baguio endures because it is continually remembered/re-membered, re-conjured, and re-invented by many more for whom this city is, or has truly become, home.”"

"2. Baguio Beginnings 

Dean C. Worcester found a “wonderful region of pine parks” complete with “a magnificent spring of crystal-clear water” when he first surveyed Baguio in 1900. He immediately decided “that there was nothing lacking to make Baguio an admirable site for the future summer capital and health resort of the Philippines.” Soon, the Philippine Commission worked on building the Benguet (now Kennon) Road to connect Baguio to Manila, the capital of the colony. In 1904, Architect Daniel Burnham began to plan Baguio's urban geography."

"The first government buildings were built on the property of
Otto Scheerer, a German businessman who had been living for a long time in Benguet. Among
the first to be built was a sanitarium."

"3. The Pines Hotel 

By 1910, new government buildings in Baguio had been completed. Before that, the old sanitarium had been leased to a private individual named Charles M. Jenkins, who converted the structure to the Hotel Pines."

"Baguio, the only American-sculpted
colonial hill station in Asia, was packaged as “the Health Resort of the Far
East” while Hotel Pines was touted as “the best equipped hotel in the Islands.” Baguio was considered at par with Simla, the summer capital of British India."

"By the 1930s, Baguio and the Pines Hotel were in full swing. In a 1931 booklet, former governor of Bontoc, Samuel E. Kane, writes that “it is impossible to convey by the spoken or written word any adequate idea of the beauty of Baguio and its surroundings. Many world travelers have expressed the idea that Baguio, with its combination of scenic beauty, and almost perfect climate, has no equal anywhere on earth.”"

"The 1930s was also the time of the mining boom, which contributed to a rise in the commercial and tourist traffic between Manila and Baguio (and explains the creation of the Loakan Airport). As early as the 1910s, the government-owned Manila Railroad Company extolled on the virtues of Baguio and the Pines Hotel in their advertisements of trips from Manila to Baguio."

"4. War and Fire

Baguio was not spared from the war that crushed the Philippine economy and an entire era. In
March 1945, American fighter planes destroyed the city with napalm and bombs.

Since Baguio housed Camp John Hay, a major army post of the
United States in the Philippines, it attracted the attention of the Japanese
forces in World War II. Only five hours after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on
December 7, 1941, 18 planes dropped 72 250-kilogram bombs on Camp John Hay,
signaling the beginning of World War II in the Pacific. Twenty days later,
Baguio became an occupied city."

"After the war, Pines Hotel thrived on Luneta Hill. From the late 1950s onwards, it struggled with debt and ownership
issues with the Development Bank of the Philippines, the Manila Hotel
Company, and the Manila Railroad Company."

"On August 28, 1968, the government sold Pines Hotel for P6.8 million to Resort Hotels Corporation (RHC). However, in 1969, the purchasing deal was halted when the government refused to transfer the title of the property to the new owners until the balance of the purchase price, amounting to P5.9 million, had been paid.

The legal battles did not stop the new managers of the Pines Hotel from trying to revive what already seemed a dying institution."

"By the start of 1984, RHC had owed the government a total of about
P114 million. Pines Hotel was among the several properties in
Baguio, Tagaytay, and Cagayan de Oro that were mortgaged for this debt. The
properties in Baguio were auctioned off in March 1984. The DBP won these
properties, as well as those in Tagaytay and Cagayan de Oro."

"On October 24, 1984, 17 people, including nine Americans, died in a fire that razed Pines Hotel to the ground. DBP collected around P64.5 million as insurance proceeds. In May 1988, DBP sold the Baguio City properties to SM Investment Corporation, which built the mall that now stands on the old site of the New Pines Hotel."

"5. Baguio Now

On July 16, 1990, a 7.7-magnitude earthquake shook Baguio, bringing hotels and other buildings to the ground and claiming up to 1,000 lives. The site, www.cityofpines.com, succinctly describes what has happened to Baguio more than a decade after:

“The residents who suffered have apparently
recovered and went on with their lives. The city is back once again to the
usual and normal conditions and problems ... heavy traffic caused by the
numerous vehicles and the difficulty of finding a parking space in the downtown
area, the continued rise in cost of consumer items, perennial water shortage,
the ever-increasing student population, the crowd of people coming up to the
city on holidays such as during the [H]oly [W]eek, etc.”"

"In 2003, the largest commercial mall in Northern Luzon opened on Luneta Hill. Pointing out that “[t]ourists from around the region, even as far as the South and abroad, flock to Baguio to experience the fresh mountain breeze,” the “Supermall” boasts of the use of natural lighting and the cool temperature. 

In 2011 and 2012, the mall faced controversy over its plan to remove close to 200 trees from its property in order to build a parking lot. Baguio residents and civil groups protested against what they called a “massacre” of trees, and brought the case to court. 

In December 2012, the court ruled that the mall's plan for expansion “will not cause irreparable injury to the environment or the Constituents of the City of Baguio.”"

"Another Baguio old-timer, Dinggot Conde-Prieto, said it clearly: the city “evokes more than just a sense of place and time; Baguio is a state of consciousness, forever locked in space and being.” With everyone who passed by Baguio—soldier patients, student transients, tourists—the place, like any other, will persist longer in the memory of its inhabitants. As Dean Worcester declared exactly 100 years ago, “Baguio has come to stay.”"