History Of the House

Built in 1926, the Molo Mansion is defined by its American Colonial architecture with Neoclassical and subtle Art Deco features. From the gate, visitors are dropped off at the roundabout with a fountain at the center, and led up to the semi-circular arcaded portico with a terraced veranda on the ground floor and a balcony on the second floor.

A molded stringcourse supported by a series of ancones, a scroll-shaped corbel, runs around the second-floor line of the building envelope. The house is surmounted by a hip and valley terracotta-tiled roof with stylized floral-patterned roof vents supported by wooden brackets. Above the central semi-circular bay, there is a mirador, a common feature of Mission Revivalist architecture in the Philippines, which affords extensive views of the surrounding gardens.

The Lacson-Yusay Mansion originally belonged to the family of Estanislao Yulo Yusay, a prominent lawyaer and judge from Molo, and his wife Petra Lacson-Yusay. They had been living on the property before the mansion was built in 1925, fifteen years after Estanislao died. Of the couple’s ten children, Rosario Yusay inherited the house where she lived with her husband, Timoteo Consing Sr., governor of Iloilo from 1934 to 1937.