Ybor City

In the early 1880s, Tampa was an isolated village with a population of less than 1000 and a struggling economy.[5] However, its combination of a good port, Henry Plant's new railroad line, and humid climate attracted the attention of Vicente Martinez Ybor, a prominent Spanish cigar manufacturer.[6]

Ybor had moved his cigar-making operation from Cuba to Key West, Florida, in 1869, due to political turmoil in the then-Spanish colony. But, labor unrest and the lack of room for expansion had him looking for another base of operations, preferably in his own company town.[7]

José Martí and cigar workers on the steps of V.M. Ybor's factory, 1893

Ybor considered several communities in the southern United States and decided that an area of sandy scrubland just northeast of Tampa would be the best location. In 1885, the Tampa Board of Trade helped broker an initial purchase of 40 acres (160,000 m²) of land, and Ybor quickly bought more.[7] However, Ybor City very nearly didn't happen at all. Vicente Ybor initially failed to come to an agreement with the owner of the 40 acre parcel. The Tampa Board of Trade was horrified to find that the purchase had failed and hatched a plan to get the buyer and seller back together. Vicente Ybor was sitting in the train station on his way to Jacksonville to look at more property when the Board of Trade (a group of five, one of whom was Frederick Salomonson, future 3-time mayor of Tampa) arrived and persuaded Ybor to reconsider and the deal went forward from there, the birth of Ybor City.

Cigar making was a specialized trade, and Tampa did not possess a workforce able to man the new factories. To attract employees, Ybor built hundreds of small houses for the coming influx of mainly Cuban and Spanish cigar workers, many of whom followed him from Key West and Cuba. Other cigar manufacturers, drawn by incentives provided by Ybor to further increase the labor pool, also moved in, quickly making Tampa a major cigar production center.[8]

Italians were also among the early settlers of Ybor City. Most of them came from a few villages in southwestern Sicily. The villages were Santo Stefano Quisquina,[9] Alessandria della Rocca, Bivona, Cianciana, and Contessa Entellina.[10] Sixty percent of them came from Santo Stefano Quisquina.[11] Before settling in Ybor City, many first worked in the sugar cane plantations in St. Cloud, central Florida. Some came by way of Louisiana.[12] A number of families migrated from New Orleans after the lynching of eleven Italians in 1891 during the "Mafia Riot".[13] Italians mostly brought their entire families with them, unlike other immigrants.[13] The foreign-born Italian population of Tampa grew from 56 in 1890 to 2,684 in 1940.[14] Once arriving in Ybor City, Italians settled mainly in the eastern and southern fringes of the city. The area was referred to as La Pachata, after a Cuban rent collector in that area. It was also called "Little Italy".[14]

Unlike Cubans and Spaniards, the Italians arrived in the cigar town without cigar-making skills. When the early Italians entered the factories, it was at the bottom of the ladder, positions which did not involve handling tobacco. Working beside unskilled Cubans, mainly Afro-Cubans, they swept and hauled and were porters and doorkeepers. In time, many did become cigar workers, including Italian women. The majority of the Italian women worked as cigar strippers in 1900, an undesirable position mainly held by women who could find nothing else. However, eventually many of them became skilled cigar makers, earning more than the male Italian cigar makers. Other Italian immigrants started small businesses built around the cigar industry, such as cafés, food stores, restaurants, and boardinghouses.[14]

The least known of the immigrants that came to Ybor City are the Germans,[15] the Romanian Jews, and the Chinese. The Chinese and Jews were employed mainly in service trades and retail businesses.[16] The Germans arrived after the 1890s, and most were businessmen. In the cigar factories, they worked as managers, bookkeepers, and supervisors. Cigar boxes were made by German-owned factories. Several early cigar box labels were made by German lithographers. The Germans formed their own club, the Deutsch Amerikanischer Verein. The club building is still standing on Nebraska and 11th Avenue. It contained a restaurant open to the public that served German food. In 1919, because of anti-German feelings from World War I, they sold the building to the Young Men's Hebrew Association. The building is now used as offices for the City of Tampa.[17]

In 1887, Tampa annexed the neighborhood. By 1900, the rough frontier settlement of wooden buildings and sandy streets had been transformed into a bustling town with brick buildings and streets, a streetcar line, and many social and cultural opportunities. Largely due to the growth of Ybor City, Tampa's population had jumped to almost 16,000.[18]

Inside an Ybor City cigar factory ca. 1920

Ybor City grew and prospered during the first decades of the 20th century. Thousands of residents built a community that combined Cuban, Spanish, Italian, and Jewish culture. "Ybor City is Tampa's Spanish India," observed a visitor to the area, "What a colorful, screaming, shrill, and turbulent world."[19]

Circulo Cubano de Tampa, one of Ybor City's social clubs

An aspect of life were the mutual aid societies built and sustained mainly by ordinary citizens. These clubs were founded in Ybor's early days (the first was the Centro Español, established in 1891) and were run on dues collected from their members, usually 5% of a member's salary. In exchange, members and their whole family received services including free libraries, educational programs, sports teams, restaurants, numerous social functions like dances and picnics, and free medical services. Beyond the services, these clubs served as extended families and communal gathering places for generations of Ybor's citizens.

There were clubs for each ethnic division in the community – the Deutscher-Americaner Club (for German and eastern Europeans), L'Unione Italiana (for Italians), El Circulo Cubano (for light-skinned Cubans), La Union Marti-Maceo (for Afro-Cubans), El Centro Español (for Spaniards), and the largest, El Centro Asturiano, which accepted members from any ethnic group[20]

Though there was little overt racism inside the diverse neighborhood, Florida's Jim Crow laws forbade Afro-Cubans from belonging to the same social organization as their more European-looking countrymen. Sometimes differences in skin color within the same family made joining the same Cuban club impossible.[21] In general, the rivalries between all the clubs were friendly, and families were known to switch affiliations depending on which one offered preferred services and events.

Cuban Club in Ybor City

Cigar production reached its peak in 1929, when 500 million cigars were rolled in the factories of Ybor City.[22] Not coincidentally, that was also the year that the Great Depression began.

During the 1920s, organized crime families thrived in both Tampa and Ybor. Aside from bootlegging, the Ybor mafia ran numerous numbers rackets, called bolita. By 1927, there were over 300 bolita houses in Ybor City.[23]

The Depression was a major blow to cigar manufacturers. Worldwide demand plummeted as consumers sought to cut costs by switching to less-expensive cigarettes, and factories responded by laying off workers or shutting down. This trend continued throughout the 1930s as the remaining cigar factories gradually switched from traditional hand-rolled manufacturing to cheaper mechanized methods, further reducing the number of jobs and the salaries paid to workers.[24]

After World War II, many returning veterans chose to leave Ybor City due to a lack of well-paying jobs and a US Veterans Administration home loan program that was only applicable to new homes, of which there were few in the neighborhood. In fact, the home stock was aging poorly, as many of the structures built in the early days of Ybor City were still in use.[25]

As the historic neighborhood continued to empty out and deteriorate through the 1950s and 1960s, the federal Urban Renewal program sought to revitalize the area by demolishing older structures and encouraging new residential and commercial development. The demolition took place, but due to a lack of funds, the redevelopment did not happen. The primary legacy of the program was blocks of vacant lots which remained empty for decades. The construction of Interstate 4 through the center of the neighborhood during this period also resulted in the destruction of many buildings and cut most of the north–south routes through the area.[24]

By the early 1970s, very few businesses and residents remained, most notably the Columbia Restaurant and a few other businesses along 7th Avenue.[26]

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  7th Ave Sign in Ybor City
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  7th Ave Ybor City
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  Traffic in Ybor City
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  Centro Ybor, a restored shopping area on 7th Ave
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  The Italian Club of Tampa - 2014
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  Ybor City Food Mart - 2014
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  The J.C. Newman cigar factory - 2023

Businesses on 7th Avenue

In the early 1980s, an influx of artists seeking interesting and inexpensive studio quarters started a slow recovery, followed by a period of commercial gentrification.[27][28] By the early 1990s, many of the old long-empty brick buildings on 7th Avenue had been converted into bars, restaurants, nightclubs, and other nightlife attractions.[29] Traffic grew so much that the city built parking garages and closed 7th Ave. to traffic to deal with the visitors.

As of 2023, the JC Newman company continued to manufacture cigars, using 1930s machines

Cigar making display, Ybor City Museum State Park

Since around 2000, the city of Tampa and the Ybor City Chamber of Commerce have encouraged a broader emphasis in development. With financial help from the city, Centro Ybor, a family-oriented shopping complex and movie theater, opened in the former home of the Centro Español social club. The Florida Brewing Company building was restored into a commercial building in 2001.[30] New apartments, condominiums and a hotel have been built on long-vacant lots, and old buildings have been restored and converted into residences and hotels. New residents began moving into Ybor City for the first time in many years.[31] The blocks surrounding 7th Avenue also thrive with restaurants, nightlife and shopping.[32][33] Reflecting the district's status as a party destination, Ybor City is referenced extensively in the lyrics of Brooklyn-based rock band The Hold Steady. The song "Killer Parties", for instance, contains the line "Ybor City is très speedy, but they throw such killer parties."[34] In May 2009 Swedish super-retailer IKEA opened its long-awaited Tampa location in the southern edge of Ybor City.[35]

The local museum is the Ybor City Museum State Park in the former Ferlita Bakery building (originally La Joven Francesca) building on 9th Avenue. Tours of the gardens and the "casitas" (small homes of cigar company workers) are provided by a ranger. Exhibits, period photos and a video cover the founding of Ybor City and the cigar making industry.[36]

• Jason Isbell references Ybor City in the song "Traveling Alone" from the album Southeastern released in 2013.
• The Hold Steady also reference Ybor City in several of their songs. Some examples are "Killer Parties", "Slapped Actress", "The Cattle And The Creeping Things" and "Most People are DJs".
• JJ Grey & MOFRO references Ybor City in a song of that title on their album Orange Blossoms.

• Ybor City natives Jose Yglesias and Ferdie Pacheco have each written several books and stories set in their hometown. Most notably, Yglesias' debut novel is entitled A Wake in Ybor City, while Pacheco's memoir of his early life is called Ybor City Chronicles.
• Anna in the Tropics, the winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama written by Nilo Cruz, is set in the cigar factories of Ybor City.
• Ybor City and Tampa are prominently featured in the novels Live by Night and its sequel World Gone By by Dennis Lehane.
• Ybor City and the greater Tampa Bay area is the setting for the novel Only Dangerous In The Breeding Season by John Callaghan.

• The 2016 film Live by Night (based on the books of Dennis Lehane) is centered on an Ybor City bootlegger who becomes a notorious gangster during Prohibition. The crime drama was written, directed, and co-produced by Ben Affleck, who also played the starring role. Although the movie is almost entirely set in Tampa during the early 1930s, much of it was shot in and around Brunswick, Georgia due to movie production tax incentives offered by the state of Georgia and the town's proximity to Affleck's home. Ybor City-inspired signage and decorations were added to buildings in downtown Brunswick, and several new buildings based on locations in Tampa were constructed on empty lots to add to the "fake Ybor City" setting.[45]

• In 2016, the Ad Council and the non-profit Love Has No Labels produced a public service announcement promoting diversity and inclusion starring John Cena that used Ybor City as a backdrop for a commercial which premiered on July 4, 2016 to coincide with Pride Month. The PSA promotes the importance of acceptance of all communities, regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age and ability.[46]

• Espinosa, Jack (2008). Cuban Bread Crumbs. Xlibris Corporation. ISBN 978-1-4257-9678-5.
• Tampa Bay History Center (2003). Hillsborough's Communities. Tampa Bay History Center. ISBN 1-930148-07-0.
• Ingalls, Robert (2003). Tampa Cigar Workers: A Pictorial History. Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-2602-4.
• Lastra, Frank (2006). Ybor City: The Making of a Landmark Town. University of Tampa Press. ISBN 1-59732-003-X.
• Mormino, Gary (1998). The Immigrant World of Ybor City. Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-1630-4.
• Mormino, Gary; Tony Pizzo (1983). Tampa The Treasure City. Tulsa, OK: Continental Heritage Press. ISBN 0-932986-38-2.
• Muniz, Jose Rivero (1976) [1954]. The Ybor City Story: 1885-1954. translated by E. Fernandez and H. Beltran. private printing.
• Pacheco, Ferdie (1994). Ybor City Chronicles. Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-1296-1.
• Westfall, Loy G. (2000). Tampa Bay: Cradle of Cuban Liberty. Key West Cigar City USA. ISBN 978-0966894820.