Volunteers give historic Filipino building face lift
By Anna Kaplan
The Record - Aug. 6, 2006
STOCKTON - The Little Manila Foundation is reviving the streets in the southern shadow of the Crosstown Freeway, one fresh coat of paint at a time.
Dozens of people from Stockton’s Filipino community spent their Saturday painting the Daguhoy Lodge building on the corner of Hunter and Hazelton streets in the second annual Fight the Blight event that aims to rescue a once-vibrant neighborhood from the neglects of time.
“It’s not just a building you pass by. It’s a standing part of history,” said Rebecca Abellana, 23, a Stockton teacher and a member of the Little Manila Foundation.
The Daguhoy Lodge was opened in 1926 as a community center and boardinghouse for thousands of Filipino men who had been recruited from their native islands in the 1920s and ’30s to work in California’s asparagus fields. Stockton was the home away from home for many of these migrant workers, who were not allowed to own property or intermarry and instead sought refuge in the Little Manila neighborhood.
Many of the former residents left their belongings in the lodge, and some of these are on display in the museum’s basement, restored to look like the men’s living quarters 70 years ago. The small museum shows a piece of history of a group of hard-working men given less than their due.
“It says a lot about the Filipino community that despite the racism, they wanted to create a building, create an institution for these people,” said Dawn Mabalon, one of the founders of the Little Manila Foundation.
Three of the neighborhood’s buildings - the Rizal Social Club, the Hotel Mariposa and the Emerald Restaurant, all on Lafayette Street - are on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of endangered historic places. The rest of the old neighborhood has been lost to time and segmented by the highway.
While the lodge no longer serves as a boardinghouse, it still serves as a social and cultural meeting place for its few remaining members.
For older members, like Antonio Songcayawan, 78, who has been a member of the lodge for almost 30 years, the revitalization means that the members’ way of life will be preserved.
“We are really struggling, because most of the old members are gone,” he said.
Now the younger generation is stepping up, paintbrushes in hand. For Gnaumie Valle, 17, Saturday’s painting session was a way to reclaim her family’s history. Her grandmother came to Stockton in the 1930s, during the heyday of the Daguhoy Lodge.
“This house is part of our history,” she said.
“It’s part of my heritage,” added Stacy Arquines, 15. “I can do more for my community if I start young.”
The foundation’s members hope that the revitalization serves as inspiration for the rest of the neighborhood. Tony Somera, a board member of the foundation and the grand master of the martial arts academy that practices at the lodge, said he has seen the building’s neighbors show respect toward the structure. Despite the rampant graffiti covering nearby walls, the Daguhoy Lodge has been spared from painted gang symbols.
According to Susan Eggman, a Stockton City Council runoff candidate who came to the Daguhoy on Saturday to help paint, the group’s effort “symbolizes that a change in one place can rever-berate through the community.”
For Somera and others, a summer afternoon spent painting in the hot sun is the least they can do for the ancestors who risked everything to work in the asparagus fields.
“This is nothing compared to what they did for us,” Somera said. “They set the foundation.”
