GUEST COLUMNIST
The news that Ayala Avenue and portions of Paseo de Roxas and Makati Avenue in Makati commercial district shall be made car-free every Sunday morning for the month of September got me excited. More than opportunity to explore the busiest streets of the country leisurely on foot, it was a chance to finally walk through history on the Philippine first ever international airport runway.
The 2.3-kilometer Ayala Avenue was once the runway of the old Nielson Airport. That portion of Makati was nothing but rice field before that belonged to Hacienda San Pedro de Macati owned by the Zobel de Ayala family until a New Zealand-born businessman named Laurie Reuben Nielson proposed to the Ayalas leasing 42 hectares of land for the construction of an airport. In 1937, the Nielson Airport was inaugurated and it was considered as the biggest and best equipped in Asia.
Nielson Airport became the primary gateway between Manila and the rest of the Philippines, and later between the Philippines and the rest of the world, according to the Filipinas Heritage Library. Philippine Airlines’ first flight took off from Nielson Airport for Baguio on March 15, 1941 using a single Beechcraft Model 18 carrying two pilots and five passengers on its maiden flight.
The operations of Nielson Airport were interrupted during Second World War when major airports in the country such as Clark, Sangley Point and Nielsen were bombed by the Japanese. After the war, the damaged airport and facilities were fully restored. In 1946, commercial air services at Nielson Airport, including international flights, resumed.
When a newer and bigger airport was built in Nichols Field in Pasay in 1948, the Nielson Airport was closed and the facilities was reverted to the original of the land. The Ayalas converted the primary runway into Ayala Avenue and the secondary runway into Paseo de Roxas to give way to the development of the Makati business and commercial district. The original passenger terminal and control tower were preserved, which came to be known as Nielson Tower.
This portion of Makati became the busiest in the country in terms of motor vehicle and pedestrian traffic. I saw how it grew from the time in 1980s when the height of the building was still required to follow a certain limit to the present when several old buildings were torn down to give way to new skyscrapers. I also saw how Ayala Avenue became pedestrian-friendly with the constructions of several overpasses and underpasses making crossing between streets easier.
I used to walk the stretch of Ayala Avenue in the mid-1980s during my business graduate studies in Ateneo from Salcedo Village to EDSA. At that time, I was not aware that Ayala Avenue was once an airport runway. Otherwise, I would have attempted walking on Ayala Avenue’s center island. But I was not as adventurous and as curious about history then as I am now.
On Sept. 9, the city of Makati launched a traffic-free zone at the car-free Sunday mornings at Ayala Avenue for the month of September for different outdoor activities like running, walking, biking, skating and other two-wheeled mobility activities. This is to allow people as well as the city itself to take a breather from the stress of urban living. Ayala Avenue and the two adjacent streets surrounding Ayala Triangle are closed to traffic from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. For a change, people walk the streets of Makati in running outfits instead of business suits.
It is commendable for such big businesses to promote a healthier life to strike a balance between being busy making a living and making a life. It somehow humanizes a city.
There is an aspect of walking around a city that I have now started to enjoy: it is discovering its past so that I can understand its present and be prepared for its future. Most people walking or running in Ayala Avenue that Sunday mostly wanted to exercise or to maybe just to relax or to get a dash of fresh air. My purpose in going there aside from exercising of course was to take that walk through the history of the once busy airport runway.
As I stood there, old man now who once roamed around this urban jungle, at the middle of Ayala Avenue and Makati Avenue, just a few meters from the old Nielson Tower, I imagined myself riding on that old Beechcraft, ready to take off to the world full of hope and new discoveries.
(The author recently retired as an engineer in an auto manufacturing company. He was a regular contributor to MB's Cruising Magazine. His taste for adventure has not kept him from travelling, usually via not-so-usual routes.)