Phuong Quan Communal House

To date, the exact year in which Phuong Quan Communal House was built is still unknown, but the architectural style of the communal house, most clearly shown in the main worship hall, is the style of a 17th-century Vietnamese communal house. Initially, the communal house had only one transverse building; during a restoration in the 19th century, a rear extension (chuôi vồ) was added to serve as the rear sanctuary, forming a “đinh” (T-shaped) plan. Later, two more buildings, the left and right side halls, were added.

Phuong Quan Communal House is only a few dozen meters from Provincial Road 72; in front of the communal house there is a square communal-house well. Passing through the three-entrance gate built in the nghi môn style with four ornamental pillars and two side gates leads to the communal-house courtyard, flanked by the left and right side halls, each with five bays and built in the style of a house with solid gable walls. The wooden roof trusses are all made in the kèo kẻ style, with giá chiêng placed on the crossbeams. At the end of the courtyard is the main hall, consisting of three bays and two side bays, whose wooden architecture was once described by the late Professor Tran Quoc Vuong as “very distinctive.” At the front of the central bay are two large wooden doors with rolling wheels; at the front of the side bays are a balustrade system with turned balusters and folding panel doors in the traditional Vietnamese style. The trusses are set on six rows of column bases, among which the main columns have a circumference of up to 1.5 m.

In the overall wooden architecture of the main hall, the truss frames are linked by large upper and lower beams and by a floor-beam system in the two side bays. The central bay alone has no floor; its ground is paved with bricks and used as the place for arranging altars and conducting rituals. From the outside, the boat-shaped wooden floor system in the two side bays of the main hall is easy to recognize. The space beneath the floor is left empty; one can see the column footings made of blue stone, square at the bottom and round at the top. The rear sanctuary is built in the chồng diêm style, with two roof tiers. The wooden trusses in the rear sanctuary are made in the “upper chồng rường, lower kẻ” style, favoring smooth planing and close fitting, and are very solid. Beneath the truss of the first bay of the rear sanctuary, adjoining the main worship hall, is a panel-door system separating the main worship hall from the rear sanctuary. In the next bay and the inner side bay is the central sanctuary, with a raised wooden floor forming the restricted sanctuary where the village guardian deities are worshipped and where the cabinets containing the dragon thrones, memorial tablets, and ritual objects are placed.

Phuong Quan Communal House was ranked as a national architectural and artistic relic in 2000.