Juan M. Arellano

Juan M. Arellano (1888 to 1960) was among the most important Filipino architects of the American colonial period, celebrated for monumental civic buildings that shaped the look of prewar Manila. Trained in the Beaux-Arts tradition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Drexel Institute, he moved fluidly between grand neoclassicism and, after a 1927 study trip to the United States, an exuberant Art Deco.

His signature works include the Manila Central Post Office of 1926, the Legislative Building that later housed the old Congress and now holds the National Museum of Fine Arts, and the ornate Manila Metropolitan Theater of 1935, long regarded as one of the finest Art Deco structures in Asia. He also designed provincial capitols and the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex, and helped shape Manila zoning and the master plan for Quezon City.

A supervising architect at the Bureau of Public Works and a past president of the Philippine Institute of Architects, Arellano left a body of work that remains central to Philippine architectural heritage.