San Nicolas, Manila

San Nicolas is one of the sixteen districts in the city of Manila in the Philippines. It is located at the west central part of the city, on the northern bank of Pasig River bounded by the districts of Binondo to the east, and Tondo to the north and west. Considered as a heritage district of Manila, this community has kept its 19th-century ancestral houses, which symbolizes the wealthy lives of the people who used to live there, similar to the ancestral houses of Silay and Vigan.
As of the May 1, 2010 national census, the population of San Nicolas is 44,241 with 15 barangays named as numbers from 268 to 276 and from 281 to 286.
History.
San Nicolas was originally a fishing town named Baybay, which is also a Tagalog word for shore. Regalado Trota Jose, a historian, mentions San Nicolas in his book about bells as the formerly Baybay town during the late 16th century. San Nicolas is the western part of the first Chinatown in the Philippines, and perhaps the world. The eastern part of the Chinatown is Binondo, which was founded in 1594 by Governor-General Luis Perez Dasmariñas. The Dominican order came to western part of Chinatown in 1596 and then founded San Nicolas in 1598. This was the first mission by the Dominicans outside Intramuros.
In 1901, during the American colonization of the Philippines, Daniel Burnham, an American architect and urban planner, was commissioned to build a Plan of Manila. The result of the plan was the making of places and parishes that included San Nicolas. In modern times, San Nicolas is one of the administrative districts of Manila and part of the third legislative district of Manila. It became an extension of the Filipino-Chinese community in Binondo.