American soldiers stand before the shattered remains of a Spanish colonial church and cloister in the Philippines. Built by Spanish friars during three centuries of colonial rule, such churches often suffered heavy damage during the fighting that accompanied the U.S. military's occupation of the islands following the Spanish-American War and the subsequent Philippine-American War. This photograph, numbered "137" as part of a larger documentary series, illustrates both the scale of Spanish ecclesiastical architecture and the destruction wrought by the transition to American rule at the turn of the twentieth century. Project: 218494