>>1237714Begun in 1878 near the end of Spanish colonial rule over the Philippines, Manila's once mighty Tranvias, or Streetcar in English, was once the envy of Asia.
During the first decades of the 20th century, the newly formed Meralco began to expand and modernize the streetcar network, eventually adding a total of 12 fully electrified tram lines to central Manila, for a total of 63 kilometres of electrified street rail by 1905.
By the 1920s and into the '30s, the Manila Tramway became one of the most extensive tram networks in Asia, rivalling those in far more populated cities like Hong Kong (600,000 by 1930) and Tokyo (4,000,000 by 1930). Its 100-kilometre urban and interurban service carried a recorded 35 million passengers during its peak year in 1925. The tramway was a central part of the rapidly modernizing city, as the former colonial port town was growing up fast.
The American influence and capital that had flowed into the Philippines following the US takeover brought with it a host of impressive Beaux-Arts and later Art Deco edifices, as a series of new office towers, government buildings, and train stations began to transform the Philippine capital.
During the last months of WWII, the Battle of Manila wrought havoc and near total destruction upon the once beautiful city of Manila. The Pearl of the Pacific was reduced to smouldering ruins as a result of a devastating American-led bombing campaign that decimated the city centre, along with the majority of Manila's rail infrastructure, which had been one of the prime targets of the bombings. While successful in routing the Japanese, the hard-fought Battle of Manila necessitated a near total rebuild of the capital, and the majority of the remaining historic Spanish colonial and prewar American buildings were reduced to rubble.
https://skyrisecities.com/news/2017/03/manilas-long-lost-tranvias-once-envy-asia