When Harrison Plaza, or simply HP to most of its loyal fans, first opened in 1976, it was touted as “the country’s first modern and fully air-conditioned shopping mall”, although that may be disputable considering that Ali Mall in Cubao opened a year before it and the similarly named Farmers Plaza opened the same year.
The sprawling two-storey mall initially covered a large portion of its reported total floor area of around seven hectares in what used to be a 19th century cemetery that was much later transformed into Harrison Park, owned by the City of Manila.
HP was leased by business tycoon Don Antonio Martel Jr. and his family from the Manila government. Its location was very strategic in that it was surrounded by popular landmarks, adding to its appeal.
In front of its Harrison Avenue entrance was the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. Along P. Ocampo Street was the then-posh Century Park Sheraton hotel, which also opened in 1976. In the ‘80s, the upscale bar Rock Ola in front of the hotel was very popular. Right in front of its Vito Cruz entrance was the Rizal Memorial Football and Baseball Stadiums. A stone’s throw away was the nearby Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Complex, the Manila Zoo, the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, and De La Salle University along Taft Avenue.
Also pretty close to Harrison Plaza was my elementary alma mater, Malate Catholic School, or simply MCS. HP became a regular haunt for the MCS kids when it first opened and during the years that followed. Also, because I grew up along Harrison Street in Pasay City, it was the most accessible mall to our place.
“I remember our teachers would go to HP during lunch time to catch students who were cutting classes” remembers Victorina Loria, a fellow alumna at MCS.
Since many high profile, popular concerts were held at the nearby Folk Arts Theater, many concertgoers killed time at HP hours before the shows.
Before the mall opened what would later become the equivalent of cinema multiplexes, seats of stand-alone theaters, particularly the ones in Rizal Avenue (a.k.a. Avenida) were known as Loge and Orchestra. When Harrison Plaza’s Cinema 1 and Cinema 2 opened, people were lining up for De Luxe and Premiere seats, the same seats that QUAD cinemas in Makati were known for.
I remember the very first film that opened in Harrison Plaza was King Kong, starring Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange, and which were shown in both cinemas. In succeeding years, this was the place where I saw the first run of films like Jaws 2, Carrie, A Bridge Too Far, and more.
Later, HP also had a bigger Cinema 3, which if I remember correctly opened with the James Bond classic, The Spy Who Loved Me, and was also where I saw the main event between Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed in Rocky 2. A much smaller Cinema 4 located on the second floor near the Vito Cruz entrance was where I saw fascinating films like Brazil and Wall Street.
“I remember watching a movie with practically the entire class during class hours. We almost occupied the entire seats at the theater,” recalls fellow MCS alum Gerome Cunanan.
There was also an arcade that featured a lot of video games that would later become classics. The big games were Space Invaders, Moon Cresta, Galaxian, Pac-Man, and Pinball Wizard. I myself got hooked on Breakout for the longest time.
Like Skatetown in Ali Mall, HP also had a skating rink that I will always remember for that lovely Caucasian teenager gracefully skating to Andy Gibb’s “I Just Want to Be Your Everything.” Inside HP was also the first time I ever rode a bump car, possibly the first in the country to feature such a ride. There were also go-karts in an outdoor track called Le Mans.
As a young student, the shops I gravitated to were naturally the ones that sold books and school supplies and HP was witness to the bookstore wars between the mighty National Book Store and its main rival back then, Alemar’s, which were located on opposite sides of the mall.
Because Alemar’s was marketed as “your bookstore plus,” it was not limited to books, school supplies and greeting cards but also had vinyl records and cassettes. Back then, these items were selling so well that HP had two other stand-alone record bars in Sound Off and Music Nook.
Being a preteen, I was no longer big on toys although HP’s Small World toy store was sought after for folks who found the very popular Arcega’s in Quezon City a tad too far.
Although it had its own department store, which also sold records and cassettes (too many of them to go around back then) in addition to fashionable school wear like Gregg and Kung Fu shoes, HP went on to build a big adjacent building to its left that housed the humongous Shopper’s World department store, a precursor to warehouse types that would become very popular in later years.
While there were pioneering jeans and ready-to-wear (RTW) shops like Wrangler, Jazzie and Levi’s, and 1850 Trading Post that had the look of the Old West, there was also Byron’s Tailoring and Haberdashery for those who prefer their wardrobe made-to-order.
Adidas, then distributed in the Philippines by the now defunct Rubberworld Philippines, dominated the sneaker wars. Its closest competitor was Puma although the Rubberworld-carried Grosby was also quite popular. Nike, a then upstart brand was slowly emerging as a threat, though.
One shop that was short-lived at HP but very popular with us back then was Fun House, a novelty store that sold everything from Halloween masks to practical jokes merchandise like fake cigarettes, magic playing cards and many more. I was fascinated by this store and frequented it a lot, though I was never able to afford anything that was sold there.
HP had its own Queens Supermarket, which at the time was one of the country’s most popular supermarket chain. It was here where I discovered the likes of Bread Connection and Orange Julius in the food stalls.
HP was one of the first malls to have a Gift Gate store that introduced Sanrio items and Swatch watches.
Another favorite was a restaurant that served Magnolia Ice Cream preparations like Banana Split, Rainbow Parfait, and Skyscraper.
Harrison Plaza was razed by a fire in 1981. It took two to three years for it to be renovated. In its place for a while was The Old Mill, a small shopping center with very few stores and only a single cinema as its main attraction. It did have a unique architecture and, true to its name, was constructed like an Old West wooden mill complete with running water that many millennials would find as Instagrammable if it was still around today.
By the time a renovated HP reopened in 1984, it was like the end-of-an-era for me. A changing of the guard of sorts. SM and Rustan’s (and later, Shopwise, which it owned) had their own department stores and supermarkets while established fast food brands like McDonald’s, Jollibee, Pizza Hut, Shakey’s, Tapa King and Chowking had branches.
The former Shopper’s World gave way to, first, a Jai Alai Fronton and later and still standing, SM Hypermart. There was a chapel that held Sunday and daily masses. There was also an area for competitive table tennis tournaments.
Alemar’s is long gone so Book Sale has become the go-to place for bargain books and a more affordable alternative to National Book Store.
There are no more cinemas inside the mall so I’m not sure if this is still the place to go if you’re looking for entertainment. Renovations, I suppose, have also been few and far between as the wooden interiors are now dank and smelly.
Wallet-friendly dining options like Binalot and KFC have mostly been placed at the HP Village Square, the former Old Mill. Its former cinema has been replaced by Victory Christian church.
The proliferation of tiangge stores that sell all things counterfeit have turned HP into Manila’s counterpart of Greenhills, appealing more to the masa and less of its former upscale crowd.
With its lease from the Manila government ending in either 2020 to 2022, the Martels’ contract is reportedly going to be bought out by SM Prime Holdings. The supposed plan is to put up a mall and residential condo complex.
While rumors that HP will be closed by July of this year remains unconfirmed, what is quite certain is that the tiangge tenants are told that they only have until this December to operate their respective stalls.
The imminent demise of Harrison Plaza will probably be of little importance in the grand scheme of things as the mall has aged terribly; it’s more a blight on the landscape of Manila rather than a forgotten gem. But no matter—to me Harrison Plaza is a Pinoy pop culture icon, and I look forward to seeing fading photos of its glory days appear on the Internet, when the time is right for remembering something truly gone.
Since the 1980s, seasoned journalist Edwin P. Sallan has been writing about entertainment, lifestyle, and many other subjects. Harrison Plaza, in its original incarnation, was a big part of his formative years.