The Mariano Ramos Ancestral House is the home of the late Don Mariano Ramos, first appointed Presidente Municipal of Bacolod City, Philippines. It was built in the 1930s and its architecture is a combination of Castilian and Tuscan and comprises three storeys including the tower room, known as the torre.
During World War II, the house was the most prominent structure with an over the whole city. The commanding Japanese generals seized the Ramos family house in order to use it as a watchtower and as a headquarters.
On a short stretch of Burgos Street once known as "Millionaires' Row", still stands several grand houses belonging to one of the richest and landed families of Bacolod City. The most prominent of these is the house built by the Ramos family patriarch Don Mariano Ramos, the first Municipal President or Mayor of Bacolod City.
In 1935, he commissioned a certain Architect Mendoza of Manila to design and build a house for him in the Castilian and Tuscan style.
The most prominent feature of the house is the three-storey octagonal tower that gave the owners a panoramic view of the city and the surrounding landscape. At the rear portion of the house is a rounded balcony adjacent to the master bedroom.
Don Mariano Ramos loved to entertain. Many elegant parties were held here attended by the crème de la crème (English: best of the best) of Bacolod society and visited by both local and national government officials. One such guest was Mariano's close friend and classmate, Philippine President Manuel L. Quezon.
Legendary in those days were his twenty or more cars of different makes chauffeured by Spanish mestizo and Filipino drivers.