Dr. Hermogenes T. Belen Memorial Elementary SchoolDr. Hermogenes T. Belen Memorial Elementary School is a Registered Property, Province of La Union located at Naguilian, La Union, Region I.
The Gabaldon building is a single detached structure. The ceiling was high, about five meters. It has a long five-tread flight of stairs leading to its elevated portico, which serves as a stage on special occasions. The center rooms were divided by collapsible wooden partitions that could be folded to convert the classrooms into a pavilion. The windows are huge and sashed and are made of latticed capiz-tagkawayan. Its façade has those Romanesque Doric-like pillars I’d seen only in pictures like the Parthenon. Its rooms were big and wide, with lauan floors. Its doors were imposing and made from thick and heavy narra. It had a cavernous silong (basement) – home of the kabag (bats), ahastulog (snakes), alupihan (centipede) and giant rats. Though it stank in there, the pupils use it as a hiding place whenever they were late in flag rites. The Gabaldon buildings are “attuned to the tropics.”