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Old Hagåtña home
The Jose P. Lujan 1911 house in Hagåtña is listed on both the Guam and National Registers of Historic Sites. With so few prewar homes left standing, particularly in Hagåtña, it is seen as imperative that this structure in particular be restored, according to the Guam Preservation Trust.
Lujan, a Chamorro Hagåtña resident, built the house reportedly by hauling the coral stones from Hagåtña Bay. The Spanish introduced Chamorro method of construction used for this two-story house is mamposteria. Lujan built the house with the intention of renting to U.S. Naval officers who were his first tenants.
Historians speculate that the house was one of the first built on Guam with indoor plumbing. Sometime in the 1920’s, Lujan lived in the house with his new wife for two years while he built them another house in Anigua.
Home of the Guam Institute
For a long period of this building’s life it housed the Guam Institute, one of the first private schools during Guam’s Naval Era, run by Nieves Flores. Archbishop Felixberto Flores (the first Chamorro archbishop), the first Chamorro Chief Judge Joaquin Perez, Governor Ricardo Bordallo, and other prominent local figures were all students at this school.
The Guam Preservation Trust is in the process of rehabilitating the structure and retrofitting the upper floor for use as the Trust’s office space and the lower floor to be used by various cultural groups – in keeping with the structure’s use as an institution of learning.
This house is a tangible link to Old Hagåtña. The Trust is recreating the old road that formerly ran right in front of the Lujan House and interpretive signage to tell the story of Old Hagåtña and how Guam’s capital village fell victim to the war, its reoccupation and installation of city streets in a capital village that used to house 9,832 people pre-war (half of the island’s population at the time). The signage will remind people of the out migration of Hagåtña during World War II and the Post World War II Era.
The Trust is working with building owners, Department of Parks and Recreation, to rehabilitate the Lujan House. After conducting two years of engineering analyses and preparing the architectural and engineering drawings the Trust is now in the process of rehabilitating the house and ground. The work is expected to be completed in July 2010.
For further reading:
Guam Historic Resources Division, Parks and Recreation. (accessed August 4, 2010)