Fuente Osmeña Circle

This guide to Fuente Osmena Circle opens with a cholera outbreak that killed five hundred fifty-nine Cebuanos in the early 1900s, followed by a 1906 fire that burned through downtown while the city had no clean water to fight it. It follows a young provincial governor, Sergio Osmena, later the only Cebuano ever to become Philippine president, as he pushed through a dam and waterworks system with American backing. It also traces the 1912 fountain built to mark the day the taps opened, and the six-avenue master plan an American planner unveiled for the circle that same year, of which only two roads were ever finished.