Espiritu Hall Marker
One of the paintings seen inside the Office of the Dean depicts the College of Law in the UP Manila campus in Padre Faura.
While the UP Board of Regents acquired the 493 hectare land here in Diliman in 1939, the move to Diliman in Malcolm Hall was made after the war.
Before the College of Law was able to use this building designed by Juan Arellano, it was used as one of the headquarters by the Japanese Imperial Army. By the time UP moved to Diliman on January 12, 1949, Malcolm Hall was then called as North Building. If you would hazard a guess where is the South Building, it would be across Sunken Garden, its twin building, Benitez Hall which is the College of Education.
The North Building also previously housed the College of Nursing until the 1980s and the College of Dentistry from 1948 to 1954.
Malcolm Hall was not named as such until 1963 when the Board of Regents named the buildings in UP Diliman to most of its current names.
Before that, there was a plan to construct a new building to be named Malcolm Hall in the UP Manila complex, where the College of Law held its evening classes (close to the Supreme Court and the then-Office of the Solicitor General). That building would have stood in what until recently was the NBI Headquarters. Justice Malcolm was present in the ribbon cutting for that new building, but when he died in 1961 without the fundraising call being met, the alumni decided to push for the renaming of the North Building to Malcolm Hall as a way to honor the College’s first dean.
The second building to be constructed was Bocobo Hall in 1968. Bocobo Hall was designed by Victor Tiotuyco and it was completed at the same time as another Tiotuyco design, the UP International Center.
The library also used to be at the third floor of Malcolm Hall. Espiritu Hall was constructed only in 1981. It is a 5-story building named in honor of former law Dean Jose A. Espiritu ‘14 (1934-41; 1945-1952)
In the 2010s, twin buildings—the Faculty Forum on the east, and the Law Internship Center in the west, were constructed through funding secured by UP Law alumni in the Senate, most notably Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago ’65.
