Antonio Toledo

Antonio Manalac Toledo (1890-1972) was among the first Filipino pensionados sent to the United States to study architecture, entering Ohio State University at sixteen and finishing his degree in 1911. He returned to a colonial government that was rebuilding Manila and the provinces in a monumental classical idiom, and he became one of its most prolific hands.

As a consulting architect for the Bureau of Public Works and a central figure in the Department of Architecture through the Commonwealth period, Toledo specialized in the neoclassical language of columns, pediments and symmetry that the American administration favored for civic buildings. His best-known work, the Manila City Hall, was completed in 1939 after he took over the commission; its clock tower and long colonnade still anchor the city's civic core.

Toledo's hand also shaped the government buildings around Rizal Park, including the Agriculture and Commerce Building that today houses the National Museum of Anthropology. Beyond his own drafting table he helped train the next generation, teaching at the Mapua Institute of Technology founded by his fellow pensionado Tomas Mapua until 1967.