The mansion was built in the early 1900’s by the sugar baron, Don Mariano Ledesma Lacson
(1865-1948) and was home to his unmarried children with his first wife, Maria Braga Lacson (+1911), a Portuguese from Macau. The mansion was the largest residential structure ever built at that time and had in it one of the finest furniture, chinaware, and decorative items, as the father of Maria Braga was a captain of a ship that sailed across Europe and Asia and would cart with him these items. One of their daughters maintained a beautiful garden of lilies in and around the
4-tiered fountain fronting the mansion, all brought in from abroad.
The mansion was the largest residential structure ever built at that time and had in it one of the finest furnitures, chinawares, and decorative items, as the father of Maria Braga was the captain of a ship that sailed across Europe and Asia and would cart with him these items. One of their daughters maintained a beautiful garden of lilies in and around the 4-tiered fountain fronting the mansion, all brought in from abroad.
One of the sons supervised the construction of the mansion making certain that the A-grade mixture of concrete and its pouring was precisely followed.
The mansion met its sad fate in the early part of World War II when the USAFFE (United States Armed Forces in the Far East), then guerilla fighters in the Philippines, burnt the mansion to prevent the Japanese forces from utilizing it as their headquarters. It took days of inferno to bring down the roof and the two-inch wooden floors.
To this day, the 903 square meter structure still stands tall amidst sugar plantation and continues to awe both local and foreign tourists. Truly, a picture-perfect backdrop and a magnificent sight to see.
