History of Ybor City
Encyclopedia
Ybor City is a historic neighborhood in Tampa, Florida
, located just northeast of downtown
. It was founded as an independent town in 1885 by a group of cigar
manufacturers led by Vicente Martinez-Ybor and was annexed
by Tampa in 1887. The community was originally populated by Cuban and Spanish immigrants who worked in the cigar factories, followed shortly thereafter by Italian and Eastern-European Jewish
immigrants who started businesses that catered to the cigar industry and its workers. The community was unique in the American South
for its multi-ethnic nature and its civic organizations, which included mutual aid societies and an active organized labor presence.
Ybor City grew and prospered until the Great Depression
, when a sharp reduction in the worldwide demand for fine cigars started the area on a slow decline. The end of World War II
saw a steady stream of residents begin to leave the aging neighborhood. This process accelerated through the 1950s and 60s, when the federal Urban Renewal
program and the construction of Interstate 4
resulted in the destruction of many buildings, including many housing units. Planned redevelopment
never took place, and, with its commercial
and social core virtually abandoned, Ybor City lapsed into a decades-long period of neglect and decay.
Beginning in the 1980s, portions of the area near the old business district began a slow recovery; first as a haven for artists, and then as a popular nightlife and entertainment district in the 1990s. Since 2000, many buildings around the neighborhood's commercial center around 7th Avenue have been renovated or restored, and many new multi-family residential
units have been built, leading to a steady increase in the neighborhood's population.
businessman's failed search for guava
trees. Spanish émigré Gavino Gutierrez was a civil engineer by training, but was employed by a New York City fruit packing and canning firm in the mid-1880s. He had heard that there were many guava trees growing wild in the Tampa Bay area
and, looking to add to his company's product line, set out to find them in November 1884.
The trip was long and difficult. The existing railroad line ended in Sanford, Florida
(near present-day Orlando
), and the rest of the trip was across the state by stagecoach over unpaved country roads.
Gutierrez did not find any commercial quality guavas in the isolated village of Tampa
. The community’s main commercial activities were fishing and the shipping of Florida cattle and citrus from its small port, and the local economy was struggling. However, Henry Plant was in the process of extending a railroad line across the state that would soon connect Tampa with the rest of the U.S. rail system. Gutierrez left Tampa convinced that the area had the potential for development once the railroad was complete.
Gutierrez returned to New York by sea, stopping on the way to visit his friend Vicente Martinez Ybor
at his home in Key West, Florida
. Ybor was a fellow Spaniard who had built a prosperous cigar
-making operation in Havana, Cuba based on his El Príncipe de Gales (Prince of Wales) brand. However, Ybor had provided public support and private financial assistance to Cuban revolutionaries fighting against Spanish colonial rule, and had escaped from Cuba with his family in 1868 to avoid being arrested or killed by the Spanish authorities.
Ybor rebuilt a successful business in Key West. However, by the early 1880s, high costs, labor strife, and transportation issues (overseas land links
were still decades away) had him exploring relocation options once again. Several southern American port cities such as Mobile, Alabama
; Pensacola, Florida
; and Galveston, Texas
had offered land and other concessions to attract Ybor’s factories to their town, but none of the proposals were satisfactory.
Upon learning about Ybor’s plans, Gutierrez mentioned Tampa as another possible site for relocation. Ybor was intrigued, as was Ignacio Haya, a visiting Spanish cigar manufacturer from New York who was also looking for a new factory location.
Haya and Ybor boarded the next available steamship sailing for Tampa and arrived the next day. They agreed that Tampa was an excellent location for cigar production: it was near enough to Cuba that importing Cuban tobacco
by sea would be quick and cheap; the climate was warm and humid, which would keep the tobacco leaves fresh and workable; and Plant’s new railroad line would make it easy to ship the finished cigars across the United States. However, Ybor continued negotiating with other cities while opening talks with Tampa’s Board of Trade to secure land and other enticements.
Seemingly at an impasse, Ybor and Haya prepared to move on to their next potential site: Galveston, Texas. But on October 5, 1885, as the men were literally about to depart, the Tampa Board of Trade offered to subsidize the $4000 difference in the price of the land Ybor wished to buy. Ybor readily agreed, and quickly moved to purchase 50 more adjoining acres. Haya bought his own smaller tract.
Preparation to move their cigar operations began immediately. On October 8, only three days after making the real estate deals, Ybor had crews at work clearing the land and had invited Gavino Gutierrez to lay out a street grid for a new town, which was to be dubbed Ybor City.
There was almost a major crisis before the settlement got started. The only bank in Tampa at the time was a branch of the Jacksonville-based
First National Bank. Due to the stagnant state of commercial business in town, bank management had decided to close the location. When Ignacio Haya heard the news, he visited the bank’s office to find the fixtures and equipment being packed up for shipment back to Jacksonville. Haya explained to branch manager T.C. Taliaferro that he and Ybor would need the services of a local bank to run their operations, and promised that the initial payroll would come to at least $10,000. On his own volition, Taliaferro began unpacking the boxes. The branch remained open and the crisis was averted.
. Beginners trained through lengthy apprenticeships in the hopes of someday becoming a well-respected (and well-paid) master ‘’torcedor’’.
Key West was home to thousands of trained tabaqueros in 1885. In contrast, Tampa was a small town with a population of about 3,000 and no resident cigar workers. Ybor would have to convince potential employees to leave established communities in Key West (and Cuba and New York) to help build a frontier settlement. While he enjoyed the goodwill of many Cuban tabaqueros because of his well-known support for ‘’Cuba Libre’’, that would not be enough.
Ybor’s idea was to build a modified company town
. Unlike other such communities in which the company owned virtually all of the housing and businesses (such as Pullman, Illinois), Ybor envisioned a place in which employees could own their homes and private entrepreneurs could buy land on which to build businesseses. This, he hoped, would create a pleasant environment to better attract more residents to Ybor City.
Ybor also had good business reasons to be magnanimous. His goal was to not only attract residents to town, but to get them to stay. His employees in Key West had often traveled back and forth between Florida and Cuba looking for the best pay and conditions. By offering the anchor of land and home ownership – something most tabaqueros had never experienced, especially in land-scarce Key West – Ybor encouraged his workers to stick around. Though the workforce was still relatively fluid in the early years, enough workers remained in Tampa to keep the cigar factories fully staffed and running year-round.
So along with the hastily-built wooden factories constructed by Ybor and Haya, some of the first structures in Ybor City were 50 small houses (‘’casitas’’) for prospective employees. These narrow shotgun-style homes
(so called because a shot fired through the front door would theoretically exit harmlessly out of the aligned back door) were small wooden structures, but they were well-built and relatively comfortable. Ybor offered them for sale at a price just above his cost to build them (initially $400), payable in small deductions from the workers’ salary in his cigar factory.
Another of Ybor’s modifications to the company town model was that his community was not a one-(or even two-) company town. To increase the number of jobs (and thus the pool of available workers), Ybor encouraged other cigar manufacturers to move to his new colony by offering cheap land and a free factory building if they agreed to meet certain job-creation quotas. Even with these inducements, cigar workers and other cigar manufacturers were slow in coming to what was still a primitive settlement - few were willing to take the risk of moving to and buying a home in a new place that might not last.
On April 13, 1886, Haya’s factory produced the first Ybor City cigar. Ybor’s factory followed suit a few days later. At the time, they still had less than 100 employees between them.
Later in the same month, Key West suffered a fire that ravaged much of the city. Hundreds of homes and several cigar factories were destroyed, including Ybor’s still-operational main location. Needing jobs and not willing to wait for their homes and workplaces to be rebuilt, many tabaqueros decided to pack up their surviving belongings and board a steamship for Tampa. The fire also encouraged several Key West cigar manufacturers to either build a branch factory in Ybor City or relocate altogether. Cigar makers in New York and Cuba also took note, and many followed suit in the coming years.
More available jobs in the cigar industry attracted more residents. Cigar workers found ready employment in the ever-growing number of large factories and small storefront shops (“buckeyes”) and came in ever-growing numbers. More immigration meant more amenities such as a wider range of businesses and more opportunities for social and cultural events, which in turn attracted more new residents, which attracted more businesses, etc. This cycle of growth lasted until the late 1920s, by which time Ybor City was home to hundreds of cigar making businesses and tens of thousands of permanent residents and had a thriving cultural scene.
By the end of 1886, Ybor’s and Haya's factories had combined to produce over 1,000,000 hand-rolled cigars in just over six months. This number would be dwarfed in the years to come.
which was the largest cigar factory in the world at the time. But for the most part, the Ybor City that greeted the first arrivals was primitive.
Structures in the new town were mainly wooden and quickly-built. Unpaved streets of thick sand made travel difficult, especially by wagon. There were no sidewalks or streetlights, and nighttime travelers often carried a lantern to find their way and a gun for protection from alligator
s, bears
, panthers
, or other wildlife that often wandered into town from the surrounding swamps, forests, and scrubland
. As an early resident observed, “What we found when we arrived was a stinking hole with swamps and pestilence everywhere.”
As is typical in boom towns
, many of the first residents of Ybor City were either unmarried men or men who had left their families behind (if only temporarily) to take jobs in a place where work was plentiful but living conditions were rough. These pioneers began the process of developing the community. As another early resident explains, “[the first immigrants] did not arrive in a city where they found work; they created a city out of the work they did.”
By 1887, Tampa city leaders had expressed concern about the lack of a trained police force in the rapidly growing “wild frontier town”. They also saw the potential to greatly increase the city’s tax rolls by gaining control of the prosperous community that had suddenly sprouted just outside the city limits. So on June 2, 1887, Tampa annexed Ybor City over the protestations of Ybor himself, who felt that relinquishing civil authority would add nothing to his company town except new regulations and red tape.
In spite (or because) of its new status as a “city within a city”, by the turn of the 20th Century, Ybor City had many fine brick buildings, paved streets with streetlights, a streetcar line connecting it to Tampa and other nearby communities, and ever-expanding cultural and social opportunities.
The civic improvements were made possible by Ybor City’s affect on Tampa’s revenue. In 1885, the annual export-import duties
collected at Tampa’s port totaled $683. In 1895, they totaled over $625,000, due almost entirely to the importing of fine Cuban tobacco and the exporting of Tampa-made cigars.
One factor that expedited the city’s growth was US immigration policy
of the time. While thousands of immigrants from all over the world were carefully screened at major immigrant processing centers like Angel Island
in San Francisco and Ellis Island
in New York
, there were few restrictions on immigration from Cuba, and the restrictions that existed were laxly enforced at the port of Tampa.
With few impediments, the flow of Cuban and Spanish workers and their families back and forth between Florida and Cuba was both substantial and largely undocumented. Despite V.M. Ybor's efforts to anchor his employees in Tampa through home ownership, many Ybor City cigar workers were still open to heading back to Cuba to seek out better wages and conditions into the 1890s. Due to this divided national loyalty, it would be years before many of the early residents of Ybor City became American citizens, and many never saw reason to apply at all. In the largely insular community, immigrants could live surrounded by their own culture, so attachment to their countries of origin remained high, especially in the first generation.
The population of Ybor City diversified through the late 1880s and early 1890s as an influx of Italian immigrants began to arrive. Almost all of them were originally from the poverty-stricken Sicilian
towns of Alessandria Della Rocca
and Santo Stefano Quisquina
, though many had first tried to find work in New Orleans, New York
, or the sugar cane fields of the Kissimmee
/St. Cloud
area in central Florida
before relocating to Tampa. Arriving around the same time were a small number of Jewish immigrants, mainly Romanians and Germans escaping religious persecution and looking for economic opportunities.
Not having cigar making experience, they were unable to break into the tightly self-regulated industry in any numbers. As they tried to learn Spanish
(the language of Ybor City) and English
(the language of the rest of Tampa), they initially took whatever work they could find. Eventually, many opened businesses catering to the cigar factories and their workers. Most notable among these were successful grocery, clothing, and general goods stores; cigar box
and cigar box art firms; and vegetable and dairy farms established in rural areas a few miles east of the city.
Before 1900, a majority of the residents of early Ybor City considered themselves Cuban, with Spaniards comprising the second largest group. Consequently, the ongoing Cuban struggle for independence from Spanish colonial rule
was a topic of intense interest and constant tension in the immigrant community.
The issue had caused controversy right from the start. In 1886, Vicente Martinez-Ybor’s cigar factory had been the first to be built and equipped. However, the start of production was delayed because his Cuban workers refused to work for a Spanish foreman who had earned an anti-Cuban reputation in Key West. Only after the offending supervisor was replaced (and after Ignacio Haya’s factory had already rolled the first Ybor City cigars) would V.M. Ybor’s workers return to their benches.
When Cuba seemed poised to erupt again in the early 1890s, Ybor City became a vital source of funds, equipment, and inspiration for the independence-seekers. "El dia pa la patria" ("one day for the homeland") - donating one day's pay per week to the Cuban cause - became a patriotic duty for Tampa's Cuban population, with some of their Italian, Jewish, and even Spanish neighbors chipping in.
Jose Marti
, the "Apostle of Cuban Independence", visited Ybor City and West Tampa many times, delivering several passionate speeches to audiences of thousands. One 1893 speech from the steps of Ybor's factory was reprinted in newspapers all over the US and Cuba and led directly to war. A few Tampa residents volunteered to fight alongside Marti in Cuba, and many lost their lives in 1895 during the same skirmish that killed their inspirational leader.
Donations and organizing continued among Tampa's Latin population through 1898, when the US entered the ongoing struggle and it escalated into the larger Spanish–American War. Henry Plant used his contacts in the War Department
to make Tampa the main port of embarkation for US forces on their way to the conflict, providing a huge economic boost both to his railroad line and to Tampa as a whole. Over 30,000 troops (about double Tampa's total population at the time) and thousands of railcars full of supplies arrived to await orders to ship out, providing sudden prosperity for local businesses but stretching the small town's resources to the limit.
The troops were particularly welcome in Ybor City by Cubans who surmised that "Cuba Libre" was finally within reach. They were correct. The war lasted only a few months, and ended with Spain losing most of her remaining colonial possessions.
Some Cubans jubilantly left Tampa for their homeland, eager to enjoy the fruits of their long-fought revolution. However, most of these would eventually return. The main factors in their decision was the lack of economic opportunities and general devastation resulting from years of conflict, and the realization that Spanish colonial control had simply been replaced by American neo-colonial control. As a group, they overwhelmingly choose to put down roots and settle in Ybor City for the long term, though some migration for family and work reasons continued.
One major factor was the neighborhood's high quality of life. Like most immigrant communities at the time, Ybor City had everything a recent arrival could need: work, shops, schools, churches, and most importantly, other immigrants who shared the language and customs of the old country. But unlike most U.S. immigrant enclaves of the period, Ybor City was no slum
.
The "Latin" residents of Ybor City created a bustling community that combined Cuban, Spanish, Italian, and Jewish culture into a unique mix. “Ybor City is Tampa’s Spanish India,” observed a visitor to the area, “What a colorful, screaming, shrill, and turbulent world.” But it took more than pride to turn a sand-clogged primitive village into a thriving neighborhood; it took the financial resources of a prosperous industry.
During the first decades of the 20th century, the port duties and the payrolls of Tampa's cigar manufacturers were the engine that made the city grow and prosper. Cigar workers, especially experienced rollers of the finer cigar varieties, made a good wage and could afford to frequent the many shops in downtown Tampa and in Ybor City's commercial district centered on 7th Avenue (La Séptima). The tabaquero culture emphasized professionalism and encouraged "tasteful appreciation of the finer things in life", much to the appreciation of Tampa's shopkeepers.
By pumping out hundreds of millions of hand-rolled cigars annually (the peak was 500,000,000 in 1929, right before the Great Depression
took hold), the cigar workers of Ybor City not only made a good life for themselves, but also pumped millions of dollars into the coffers of local businesses and city government.
The longest-lasting of these organizations were the Deutscher-Americaner (German-American Club), L’Unione Italiana (Italian Club), La Union Martí-Maceo, Circulo Cubano (Cuban Club)
, El Centro Español
, and El Centro Asturiano
. These clubs were founded in Ybor City's early days (the 1st had been the Centro Español in 1891) as places were new arrivals could find support and community among other people from their country of origin. As time went on, they offered a broader range of social and entertainment opportunities.
Despite the immigrant element, Ybor City’s mutual aid clubs had less in common with aid associations such as Hull House
and other settlement houses than with benefit societies
and fraternal organizations
. Ybor City’s social clubs were founded by immigrants for the benefit of immigrants - the funds to build the large and often opulent clubhouses and to operate the organizations came from dues collected from members, usually about 5% of a member's salary.
While the clubs provided a place to socialize, the main reason they were founded was to provide basic medical care for their members. Medical care at Ybor City clinics was included for the price of weekly dues, and two of the clubs (El Centro Asturiano and El Centro Español) also established hospitals. In the days before medical insurance, this benefit was a compelling reason for residents to join.
Besides medical care, the clubs offered many social activities. Club buildings housed gymnasiums, cantinas (small cafés for members), and large auditoriums for concerts and often elaborate theatrical performances. They also organized events such as dances and picnics, sometimes hiring buses for outings at Ballast Point Park, Clearwater Beach
, or other locations outside of Ybor City itself. An active club filled a family’s social calendar, and collectively, they served as extended families and communal gathering places for generations of Ybor City residents.
The clubs were open to those of particular decent: the Italian Club for Italians, El Centro Español for Spaniards, and so on. Two interesting cases were the two clubs for Cubans and El Centro Asturiano.
Though racism
among the residents of Ybor City was not generally an issue, it was situated in the American Deep South
in the era of Jim Crow
, so its organizations had to follow the segregationist laws of Tampa. Ybor's Cuban immigrants were often racially mixed, and skin tones within families might cover a range of human colorations. Local law, however, required that darker-skinned and lighter-skinned people not socialize publicly.
Ybor City's Cuban community organized two main clubs: La Union Martí-Maceo for darker-skinned Cubans and Circulo Cubano for those with lighter skin. This was especially awkward when members of the same family had different shades of skin and were required to join different clubs, but it was the law at the time. Not surprisingly in that era, the members of Martí-Maceo found acceptance and upward mobility harder to achieve in the larger Anglo community than their white Cuban counterparts. And when the 1960s federal Urban Renewal
program attempted to redevelop Ybor City, their club building was the only one to be demolished.
El Centro Asturiano was originally founded by immigrants from Asturias, a province of northern Spain, who split from the Centro Español and formed a Tampa branch of El Centro Asturiano Club of Havana
. However, unlike the other clubs, membership was soon opened to all people of Latin decent who wanted to join. Because of this and the fact that the club built a well-respected hospital, it consistently had the largest membership of all the clubs.
The German-American Club shut down due to anti-German sentiments before WWII. Its building was used by the Young Men's Hebrew Association for several decades, and was subsequently purchased and remodeled by the city of Tampa in the late 1990s for office space. El Centro Español ceased operations in the late 1980s. After sitting vacant for several years, its building on 7th Ave. was restored and is now part of the Centro Ybor shopping/entertainment complex. The Marti-Maceo Club is still somewhat active, but its original building was demolished in 1965.
The remaining clubs (the Cuban and Italian Clubs and the Centro Asturiano) have greatly reduced their benefits and focus their resources on preserving their history and buildings. All have been at least partially restored using club dues, rental fees on their ballrooms and theaters, and various grants.
Typically, the lector would start the day reading local Spanish newspapers and some fiction, such as a romance or adventure novel. Since most residents of Ybor were very interested in politics, the lector would then usually move on to political treatises or writings about the current events in Cuba or Spain or other countries. In the afternoon, the selection was often a literary novel, such as Don Quixote or other works of classic literature. (In Nilo Cruz
's Pulitzer Prize
-winning play Anna in the Tropics
set in Ybor City, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina
is read.) Because of the lector system, even cigar workers who could not read were exposed to classic literature and were conversant on political philosophy and current events both in Ybor City and around the world.
Lectors were well respected and often highly educated. Most could look at text written in English or Italian and read it aloud in Spanish, the language of the factories. The lectors were hired and fired by the tabaqueros, not the factory owners. Their salary was paid directly by the workers through a small deduction from everyone’s weekly earnings. Despite the cost, the tabaqueros enthusiastically sustained the lector tradition.
Most factory owners were less supportive. They felt that the lectors stirred up their workforce by fostering “radical ideas”. News of labor conditions or problems in other locations, especially, led to worker walkouts and protests on many occasions. More than one owner tried to ban lectors from his factory floor, leading to bitter strikes as his employees fought for their “right” to have a lector.
The lectors would remain fixtures in Tampa’s cigar factories until 1921, when several owners negotiated the removal of the lectors as part of an agreement to end a labor strike. At the end of a particularly bitter strike in 1931, workers in all Ybor City and West Tampa cigar factories were forced to agree to the removal of lectors
Some of the lectors continued to speak to the cigar workers in other ways. Victoriano Manteiga, for example, founded La Gaceta
, a tri-lingual (English
, Spanish
, and Italian
) newspaper which is still published by his grandson in Tampa. Some took other jobs, becoming teachers or regular tabaqueros. Some went to Cuba to seek lector positions in factories which still allowed the practice.
was an illegal lottery game run by organized criminals that was very popular in Tampa, especially Ybor City, during the first half of the 20th century. While many people played and everybody knew about them, these games operated with virtual impunity due to bribes and kickbacks to key local politicians and law enforcement officials. Charlie Wall, a member of a prominent "Anglo
" Tampa family and son of a former mayor, organized the game into a large profit-making (and still illegal) business in the late 1920s and expanded into other questionable ventures from his base of operations in Ybor City.
The 1930s were a time of rampant corruption in Tampa, with many accusations of stolen elections and mayors on the payrolls of rival organized crime factions. After a time known locally as the “Era of Blood” in which local criminal interests fought over control, Santo Trafficante, Sr.
pushed Wall aside and emerged as Tampa and Ybor City’s leading crime boss in the 1940s. Later, his son Santo Trafficante, Jr.
allegedly extended the family’s influence far beyond the area.
This era of rampant corruption wound down with increased federal law enforcement efforts beginning in the 1950s. Although few of the resulting trials resulted in convictions and some mob-related activity continued, the sense of lawlessness in Ybor City and Tampa in general gradually diminished.
of the 1930s had serious consequences for Ybor City. Many smokers found themselves unable to afford luxury items and switched to cheaper cigarettes, weakening the neighborhood's dominant industry and starting the area on a slow economic and social decline.
As occurred elsewhere, many businesses laid off workers or closed altogether and many banks failed. To help keep food on the table during hard times, many residents of Ybor City plowed under their yards or vacant lots to plant vegetables and bought cows, goats, and chickens to provide milk, eggs, and meat for the family, with any surplus sold around town. (Interestingly, the descendants of those chickens still roam the area.
of 1936-1939, the cry of "No pasaran!" energized Ybor City much as the cause of Cuba Libre had done so 40 years previously. The community overwhelmingly supported the democratically elected government of Republican Spain
in its fight against the fascist uprising led by General Franco
, and many residents donated 10% of their salary and tons of old clothes to the Republican cause. A cigar worker turned the slogan of the Republicans, No parasan! (They shall not pass!), into a song which was sung at rallies in both Tampa and in Spain, and a handful of the most ardent supporters joined the fighting as members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
.
The news that Franco's forces had triumphed in 1939 was crushing news in Ybor City. Besides the disappointment about the failure of a fervently supported cause, the end of the war cut many ties between Spanish residents of Ybor City and their mostly Republican families back in Spain. In some cases, their relatives had been killed, either during the war or in Franco's post-war purge of political opponents. In other cases, Franco's tightening control and the coming of World War II
made communication difficult or impossible. In either case, links back to the mother country, which had been waning as the second generation of Ybor City residents came of age, were further weakened.
, the slow decline of the neighborhood which had begun in the early 1930s accelerated, as veterans returning home from service found a neighborhood with little economic opportunity and little prospects for improvement, leading many to relocate outside of Ybor City. Several factors played a role in that process.
For one, the worldwide demand for cigars had not returned to pre-Depression levels, and many factories that had closed in the 1930s remained shuttered and empty. By 1945, the cigar industry in Tampa employed less than half the number of the workers than it had in 1935, when the Depression had already decreased the workforce from the peak level of 1929.
The quantity and quality of jobs in the cigar industry would continue to fall as Tampa's manufacturers underwent a near-universal shift to mechanization
. Replacing traditional hand-rolled cigars with machine-made varieties allowed cigar firms to employ fewer workers and pay them less. Even when demand quickly increased to record levels during American's post-war boom
, the number of workers employed in Ybor City's factories continued to decrease due to more efficient machines. By then, Tampa's economy was buoyed by other industries such as shipping and tourism. However, little new activity had replaced cigar manufacturing in Ybor City, and job seekers often had to look elsewhere for employment.
Another issue in Ybor City after World War II was the aging of the area’s housing stock. New construction had all but stopped during the Depression and the war, and thousands of homes built during the neighborhood's era of rapid growth around 1900 were still in use. These old wooden structures were becoming dilapidated and were thus not particularly attractive to first-time home buyers such as returning veterans, who tended to gravitate to West Tampa or the booming suburb
s of Tampa.
The Veterans Administration
encouraged this trend by offering mortgage
loans on new homes at very favorable rates to returning vets. Since there were few new homes or empty lots for new construction available in Ybor City, veterans who wanted a VA loan were also pushed to buy elsewhere.
Finally, the G.I. Bill made it possible for many Ybor City-born veterans to get a college education and start a career outside of the dying local cigar industry. While many of these eventually settled back in Tampa after finishing school, few could find suitable employment in their old neighborhood and relocated as well.
For all these reasons, Ybor City’s WWII generation was the first to leave the area in large numbers since Vicente Martinez-Ybor had first cleared the scrubland in 1885.
The period from the late 1950s to the early 1970s saw two seemingly contradictory trends in Ybor City history. While the neighborhood was dying, two of its native sons, Nick Nuccio
and Dick Greco, became the first “Latins” to serve as mayor of Tampa.
Despite this newfound political clout, Ybor City stagnated and declined. As its cigar industry continued to consolidate, mechanize, and cut workforce, its population steadily moved to other parts of Tampa (especially West Tampa
) or out of the Tampa area altogether.
A few cigar manufacturers had tried to keep the hand-rolled tradition alive. However, that became almost impossible in the early 1960s, when the United States embargo against Cuba
cut off access to the Cuban tobacco which had supplied Ybor City’s factories for almost 80 years. An era had come to an end, and the neighborhood became a collection of vacant cigar factories, empty storefronts, and deserted sidewalks.
The Federal Urban Renewal
Program of the 1960s were supposed to revitalize Ybor City with new residences and businesses designed to attract tourists to “Tampa’s Latin Quarter” (a nod to the French Quarter
in New Orleans). Thousands of remaining residents were forced to move as entire blocks of old homes, business, and cigar factories were razed. Due to a lack of funds and political will, however, the replacement construction never took place, and old buildings were replaced by empty lots.
Another blow was the construction of Interstate 4
, which cut east-west across the approximate center of the neighborhood. Besides resulting in the demolition of even more homes and other structures, the highway cut most of the north-south routes through the area.
. ) None of them got past the planning stages.
Perhaps the most memorable idea was a 1967 scheme to convert the center of the neighborhood into an "Old Spain"-themed attraction enclosed in a medieval "walled city" and featuring "bloodless" bullfighting
. Organizers staged an exhibition bullfight, but the bull escaped and had to be killed by a sheriff's deputy with a high-powered rifle. The theme park proposal died along with the bull.
By the early 1970s, very few businesses and residents remained in the formerly bustling commercial center of Ybor City around 7th Avenue, most notably the Columbia Restaurant
The northern portion of the neighborhood (now known as V.M. Ybor
), which had been separated by I-4, still had a substantial population, but a clear demographic shift occurred. The area changed from predominately middle-class Latino
to predominately working poor
African American
, and many of the new residents lived in decades-old wooden homes which had survived Urban Renewal.
Starting in the late 1980s, an influx of artists seeking interesting and inexpensive studio quarters began converting long-vacant storefronts along 7th Avenue into studio and gallery space, leading to a period of commercial gentrification
.
By the early 1990s, many of these same old brick buildings on 7th Avenue had been converted into bars, restaurants, nightclubs, and other nightlife attractions. The crowds grew until portions of the old neighborhood became a nighttime carnival, especially on weekends. The city built parking garages and closed 7th Ave. to traffic to deal with the sudden explosion of visitors.
Despite the positive aspects, some residents and leaders became concerned about the disruption from the revelry and traffic. Since around 2000, the City of Tampa has encouraged a broader emphasis in development. A family-oriented shopping complex and movie theater (Centro Ybor) has opened in the former Centro Español social club. New apartments, condominiums and a hotel have been built on the empty lots, along with residences and hotels now occupying restored buildings. In 2009, IKEA
opened Florida's largest IKEA
store on 22nd Street just north of the Selmon Expressway
. People were moving back to the area around once-vibrant 7th Avenue for the first time in many years.
The recovery has not impacted different portions of historic Ybor City equally nor at the same rate. While the once-abandoned commercial district south of Interstate 4 underwent much redevelopment during the 1990s, populated areas north of I-4 and east of 22nd St. did not. Despite years of public and private attempts to spur economic growth, urban decay and high poverty have long been widespread in this area, with hundreds of decades-old homes which survived Urban Renewal still in use .
From 2000 to 2009, however, gentrification and redevelopment slowly began to spread to the current V.M. Ybor neighborhood located just north of I-4 from the Ybor City Historic District. During the period, the poverty rate in this area dropped from over 40% to about 13% .
Tampa, Florida
Tampa is a city in the U.S. state of Florida. It serves as the county seat for Hillsborough County. Tampa is located on the west coast of Florida. The population of Tampa in 2010 was 335,709....
, located just northeast of downtown
Downtown Tampa
Image:Tampa_Skyline.jpg|thumb|right|350px|Downtown Tampa looking from the Hillsborough Riverpoly 2403 537 2441 500 2488 483 2516 455 2566 439 2597 410 2649 390 2682 358 2803 315 2949 342 2956 362 3068 383 3074 406 3202 431 3204 447 3332 473 3350 484 3485 1616 2446 1587 Wachovia Centerpoly 1745 1216...
. It was founded as an independent town in 1885 by a group of cigar
Cigar
A cigar is a tightly-rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco that is ignited so that its smoke may be drawn into the mouth. Cigar tobacco is grown in significant quantities in Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Philippines, and the Eastern...
manufacturers led by Vicente Martinez-Ybor and was annexed
Annexation
Annexation is the de jure incorporation of some territory into another geo-political entity . Usually, it is implied that the territory and population being annexed is the smaller, more peripheral, and weaker of the two merging entities, barring physical size...
by Tampa in 1887. The community was originally populated by Cuban and Spanish immigrants who worked in the cigar factories, followed shortly thereafter by Italian and Eastern-European Jewish
American Jews
American Jews, also known as Jewish Americans, are American citizens of the Jewish faith or Jewish ethnicity. The Jewish community in the United States is composed predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated from Central and Eastern Europe, and their U.S.-born descendants...
immigrants who started businesses that catered to the cigar industry and its workers. The community was unique in the American South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
for its multi-ethnic nature and its civic organizations, which included mutual aid societies and an active organized labor presence.
Ybor City grew and prospered until the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, when a sharp reduction in the worldwide demand for fine cigars started the area on a slow decline. The end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
saw a steady stream of residents begin to leave the aging neighborhood. This process accelerated through the 1950s and 60s, when the federal Urban Renewal
Urban renewal
Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Renewal has had both successes and failures. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of...
program and the construction of Interstate 4
Interstate 4
Interstate 4 is a intrastate Highway located entirely within the state of Florida, United States. It goes from Interstate 275 in Tampa, Florida to Interstate 95 at Daytona Beach, Florida . It also has the Florida Department of Transportation designation of State Road 400, but only a small...
resulted in the destruction of many buildings, including many housing units. Planned redevelopment
Redevelopment
Redevelopment is any new construction on a site that has pre-existing uses.-Description:Variations on redevelopment include:* Urban infill on vacant parcels that have no existing activity but were previously developed, especially on Brownfield land, such as the redevelopment of an industrial site...
never took place, and, with its commercial
Commercial district
A commercial district or commercial zone is any part of a city or town in which the primary land use is commercial activities , as opposed to a residential neighbourhood, an industrial zone, or other types of neighbourhoods...
and social core virtually abandoned, Ybor City lapsed into a decades-long period of neglect and decay.
Beginning in the 1980s, portions of the area near the old business district began a slow recovery; first as a haven for artists, and then as a popular nightlife and entertainment district in the 1990s. Since 2000, many buildings around the neighborhood's commercial center around 7th Avenue have been renovated or restored, and many new multi-family residential
Multi-family residential
Multi-family residential is a classification of housing where multiple separate housing units for residential inhabitants are contained within one building or several buildings within one complex. A common form is an apartment building...
units have been built, leading to a steady increase in the neighborhood's population.
Guavas and cigars
Ybor City came into existence as a direct result of a New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
businessman's failed search for guava
Guava
Guavas are plants in the myrtle family genus Psidium , which contains about 100 species of tropical shrubs and small trees. They are native to Mexico, Central America, and northern South America...
trees. Spanish émigré Gavino Gutierrez was a civil engineer by training, but was employed by a New York City fruit packing and canning firm in the mid-1880s. He had heard that there were many guava trees growing wild in the Tampa Bay area
Tampa Bay Area
The Tampa Bay Area is the region of west central Florida adjacent to Tampa Bay. Definitions of the region vary. It is often considered equivalent to the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater Metropolitan Statistical Area defined by the United States Census Bureau. The Census Bureau currently...
and, looking to add to his company's product line, set out to find them in November 1884.
The trip was long and difficult. The existing railroad line ended in Sanford, Florida
Sanford, Florida
Sanford is a city in, and the county seat of, Seminole County, Florida, United States. The population was 38,291 at the 2000 census. As of 2009, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau was 50,998...
(near present-day Orlando
Orlando, Florida
Orlando is a city in the central region of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat of Orange County, and the center of the Greater Orlando metropolitan area. According to the 2010 US Census, the city had a population of 238,300, making Orlando the 79th largest city in the United States...
), and the rest of the trip was across the state by stagecoach over unpaved country roads.
Gutierrez did not find any commercial quality guavas in the isolated village of Tampa
History of Tampa, Florida
Tampa is a United States city in Hillsborough County on the west coast of the state of Florida.The area was once a home to various native American cultures, including the Tocobaga...
. The community’s main commercial activities were fishing and the shipping of Florida cattle and citrus from its small port, and the local economy was struggling. However, Henry Plant was in the process of extending a railroad line across the state that would soon connect Tampa with the rest of the U.S. rail system. Gutierrez left Tampa convinced that the area had the potential for development once the railroad was complete.
Gutierrez returned to New York by sea, stopping on the way to visit his friend Vicente Martinez Ybor
Vicente Martinez Ybor
Vicente Martinez Ybor was a Spanish American industrialist and cigar manufacturer, best known for founding the cigar-manufacturing town of Ybor City near Tampa, Florida in 1886.-Cuba:...
at his home in Key West, Florida
Key West, Florida
Key West is a city in Monroe County, Florida, United States. The city encompasses the island of Key West, the part of Stock Island north of U.S. 1 , Sigsbee Park , Fleming Key , and Sunset Key...
. Ybor was a fellow Spaniard who had built a prosperous cigar
Cigar
A cigar is a tightly-rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco that is ignited so that its smoke may be drawn into the mouth. Cigar tobacco is grown in significant quantities in Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Philippines, and the Eastern...
-making operation in Havana, Cuba based on his El Príncipe de Gales (Prince of Wales) brand. However, Ybor had provided public support and private financial assistance to Cuban revolutionaries fighting against Spanish colonial rule, and had escaped from Cuba with his family in 1868 to avoid being arrested or killed by the Spanish authorities.
Ybor rebuilt a successful business in Key West. However, by the early 1880s, high costs, labor strife, and transportation issues (overseas land links
Overseas Railroad
The Overseas Railroad was an extension of the Florida East Coast Railway to Key West, a city of almost 30,000 inhabitants located 128 miles beyond the end of the Florida peninsula...
were still decades away) had him exploring relocation options once again. Several southern American port cities such as Mobile, Alabama
Mobile, Alabama
Mobile is the third most populous city in the Southern US state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest...
; Pensacola, Florida
Pensacola, Florida
Pensacola is the westernmost city in the Florida Panhandle and the county seat of Escambia County, Florida, United States of America. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 56,255 and as of 2009, the estimated population was 53,752...
; and Galveston, Texas
Galveston, Texas
Galveston is a coastal city located on Galveston Island in the U.S. state of Texas. , the city had a total population of 47,743 within an area of...
had offered land and other concessions to attract Ybor’s factories to their town, but none of the proposals were satisfactory.
Upon learning about Ybor’s plans, Gutierrez mentioned Tampa as another possible site for relocation. Ybor was intrigued, as was Ignacio Haya, a visiting Spanish cigar manufacturer from New York who was also looking for a new factory location.
Haya and Ybor boarded the next available steamship sailing for Tampa and arrived the next day. They agreed that Tampa was an excellent location for cigar production: it was near enough to Cuba that importing Cuban tobacco
Tobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
by sea would be quick and cheap; the climate was warm and humid, which would keep the tobacco leaves fresh and workable; and Plant’s new railroad line would make it easy to ship the finished cigars across the United States. However, Ybor continued negotiating with other cities while opening talks with Tampa’s Board of Trade to secure land and other enticements.
Making a deal
Months later, in September 1885, Ybor and Haya set out on a “fact-finding mission” to the most promising relocation sites, hoping to finalize a deal and begin moving their operations soon thereafter. Their first visit was to Tampa, where the sticking point was the price of a 40 acres (161,874.4 m²) tract of land that Ybor was interested in buying from a local businessman. The owner wanted $9000 for the land, but Ybor was only willing to pay $5000. Ybor had hoped that face to face negotiations would facilitate an agreement, but neither side was willing to budge.Seemingly at an impasse, Ybor and Haya prepared to move on to their next potential site: Galveston, Texas. But on October 5, 1885, as the men were literally about to depart, the Tampa Board of Trade offered to subsidize the $4000 difference in the price of the land Ybor wished to buy. Ybor readily agreed, and quickly moved to purchase 50 more adjoining acres. Haya bought his own smaller tract.
Preparation to move their cigar operations began immediately. On October 8, only three days after making the real estate deals, Ybor had crews at work clearing the land and had invited Gavino Gutierrez to lay out a street grid for a new town, which was to be dubbed Ybor City.
There was almost a major crisis before the settlement got started. The only bank in Tampa at the time was a branch of the Jacksonville-based
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...
First National Bank. Due to the stagnant state of commercial business in town, bank management had decided to close the location. When Ignacio Haya heard the news, he visited the bank’s office to find the fixtures and equipment being packed up for shipment back to Jacksonville. Haya explained to branch manager T.C. Taliaferro that he and Ybor would need the services of a local bank to run their operations, and promised that the initial payroll would come to at least $10,000. On his own volition, Taliaferro began unpacking the boxes. The branch remained open and the crisis was averted.
Company town
Cigar making was not just a job to the tabaqueros (literally, “tobacco workers”). The ‘’torcedores’’ who rolled the finished cigars, especially, thought of themselves as “more of an artist than a worker.” The trade was closely regulated by the tabaqueros in a manner reminiscent of the artisan’s guilds of old EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. Beginners trained through lengthy apprenticeships in the hopes of someday becoming a well-respected (and well-paid) master ‘’torcedor’’.
Key West was home to thousands of trained tabaqueros in 1885. In contrast, Tampa was a small town with a population of about 3,000 and no resident cigar workers. Ybor would have to convince potential employees to leave established communities in Key West (and Cuba and New York) to help build a frontier settlement. While he enjoyed the goodwill of many Cuban tabaqueros because of his well-known support for ‘’Cuba Libre’’, that would not be enough.
Ybor’s idea was to build a modified company town
Company town
A company town is a town or city in which much or all real estate, buildings , utilities, hospitals, small businesses such as grocery stores and gas stations, and other necessities or luxuries of life within its borders are owned by a single company...
. Unlike other such communities in which the company owned virtually all of the housing and businesses (such as Pullman, Illinois), Ybor envisioned a place in which employees could own their homes and private entrepreneurs could buy land on which to build businesseses. This, he hoped, would create a pleasant environment to better attract more residents to Ybor City.
Ybor also had good business reasons to be magnanimous. His goal was to not only attract residents to town, but to get them to stay. His employees in Key West had often traveled back and forth between Florida and Cuba looking for the best pay and conditions. By offering the anchor of land and home ownership – something most tabaqueros had never experienced, especially in land-scarce Key West – Ybor encouraged his workers to stick around. Though the workforce was still relatively fluid in the early years, enough workers remained in Tampa to keep the cigar factories fully staffed and running year-round.
So along with the hastily-built wooden factories constructed by Ybor and Haya, some of the first structures in Ybor City were 50 small houses (‘’casitas’’) for prospective employees. These narrow shotgun-style homes
Shotgun house
The shotgun house is a narrow rectangular domestic residence, usually no more than 12 feet wide, with doors at each end. It was the most popular style of house in the Southern United States from the end of the American Civil War , through the 1920s. Alternate names include shotgun shack,...
(so called because a shot fired through the front door would theoretically exit harmlessly out of the aligned back door) were small wooden structures, but they were well-built and relatively comfortable. Ybor offered them for sale at a price just above his cost to build them (initially $400), payable in small deductions from the workers’ salary in his cigar factory.
Another of Ybor’s modifications to the company town model was that his community was not a one-(or even two-) company town. To increase the number of jobs (and thus the pool of available workers), Ybor encouraged other cigar manufacturers to move to his new colony by offering cheap land and a free factory building if they agreed to meet certain job-creation quotas. Even with these inducements, cigar workers and other cigar manufacturers were slow in coming to what was still a primitive settlement - few were willing to take the risk of moving to and buying a home in a new place that might not last.
Later in the same month, Key West suffered a fire that ravaged much of the city. Hundreds of homes and several cigar factories were destroyed, including Ybor’s still-operational main location. Needing jobs and not willing to wait for their homes and workplaces to be rebuilt, many tabaqueros decided to pack up their surviving belongings and board a steamship for Tampa. The fire also encouraged several Key West cigar manufacturers to either build a branch factory in Ybor City or relocate altogether. Cigar makers in New York and Cuba also took note, and many followed suit in the coming years.
More available jobs in the cigar industry attracted more residents. Cigar workers found ready employment in the ever-growing number of large factories and small storefront shops (“buckeyes”) and came in ever-growing numbers. More immigration meant more amenities such as a wider range of businesses and more opportunities for social and cultural events, which in turn attracted more new residents, which attracted more businesses, etc. This cycle of growth lasted until the late 1920s, by which time Ybor City was home to hundreds of cigar making businesses and tens of thousands of permanent residents and had a thriving cultural scene.
By the end of 1886, Ybor’s and Haya's factories had combined to produce over 1,000,000 hand-rolled cigars in just over six months. This number would be dwarfed in the years to come.
Early Ybor City: 1886-1901
From frontier town to bustling neighborhood
In 1888, Ybor completed an imposing 3-story brick buildingYbor Factory Building
The Ybor Factory Building is a historic site in Tampa, Florida, United States. The main factory and its surrounding support buildings cover an entire city block between 8th Avenue and 9th Avenues and 13th and 14th Streets in the Ybor City Historic District section of the Ybor City neighborhood.The...
which was the largest cigar factory in the world at the time. But for the most part, the Ybor City that greeted the first arrivals was primitive.
Structures in the new town were mainly wooden and quickly-built. Unpaved streets of thick sand made travel difficult, especially by wagon. There were no sidewalks or streetlights, and nighttime travelers often carried a lantern to find their way and a gun for protection from alligator
Alligator
An alligator is a crocodilian in the genus Alligator of the family Alligatoridae. There are two extant alligator species: the American alligator and the Chinese alligator ....
s, bears
American black bear
The American black bear is a medium-sized bear native to North America. It is the continent's smallest and most common bear species. Black bears are omnivores, with their diets varying greatly depending on season and location. They typically live in largely forested areas, but do leave forests in...
, panthers
Florida Panther
The Florida panther is an endangered subspecies of cougar that lives in forests and swamps of southern Florida in the United States. Its current taxonomic status is unresolved, but recent genetic research alone does not alter the legal conservation status...
, or other wildlife that often wandered into town from the surrounding swamps, forests, and scrubland
Florida scrub
Florida scrub is an endangered temperate coniferous forest ecoregion of the state of Florida in the United States. It is found on coastal and inland sand ridges and is characterized by a xeromorphic plant community dominated by shrubs and dwarf oaks. Scrub soils, a type of entisol, are derived...
. As an early resident observed, “What we found when we arrived was a stinking hole with swamps and pestilence everywhere.”
As is typical in boom towns
Boomtown
A boomtown is a community that experiences sudden and rapid population and economic growth. The growth is normally attributed to the nearby discovery of a precious resource such as gold, silver, or oil, although the term can also be applied to communities growing very rapidly for different reasons,...
, many of the first residents of Ybor City were either unmarried men or men who had left their families behind (if only temporarily) to take jobs in a place where work was plentiful but living conditions were rough. These pioneers began the process of developing the community. As another early resident explains, “[the first immigrants] did not arrive in a city where they found work; they created a city out of the work they did.”
By 1887, Tampa city leaders had expressed concern about the lack of a trained police force in the rapidly growing “wild frontier town”. They also saw the potential to greatly increase the city’s tax rolls by gaining control of the prosperous community that had suddenly sprouted just outside the city limits. So on June 2, 1887, Tampa annexed Ybor City over the protestations of Ybor himself, who felt that relinquishing civil authority would add nothing to his company town except new regulations and red tape.
In spite (or because) of its new status as a “city within a city”, by the turn of the 20th Century, Ybor City had many fine brick buildings, paved streets with streetlights, a streetcar line connecting it to Tampa and other nearby communities, and ever-expanding cultural and social opportunities.
The civic improvements were made possible by Ybor City’s affect on Tampa’s revenue. In 1885, the annual export-import duties
Duty (economics)
In economics, a duty is a kind of tax, often associated with customs, a payment due to the revenue of a state, levied by force of law. It is a tax on certain items purchased abroad...
collected at Tampa’s port totaled $683. In 1895, they totaled over $625,000, due almost entirely to the importing of fine Cuban tobacco and the exporting of Tampa-made cigars.
Rapid growth and diversification
Tampa’s city budget was not the only number that experienced tremendous growth after Ybor City’s annexation. From less than 800 residents in 1880, the population of Tampa had risen to over 5000 in 1890 and almost 16,000 in 1900. The vast majority of these new residents were immigrants who had settled in Ybor City.One factor that expedited the city’s growth was US immigration policy
History of immigration to the United States
The history of immigration to the United States is a continuing story of peoples from more populated continents, particularly Europe and also Africa and Asia, crossing oceans to the new land. Historians do not treat the first indigenous settlers as immigrants. Starting around 1600 British and...
of the time. While thousands of immigrants from all over the world were carefully screened at major immigrant processing centers like Angel Island
United States Immigration Station, Angel Island
Angel Island Immigration Station was an immigrant processing facility on Angel Island, in the San Francisco Bay. It opened in 1910 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is now the site of a museum. The museum and grounds were renovated and reopened to the public in February...
in San Francisco and Ellis Island
Ellis Island
Ellis Island in New York Harbor was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States. It was the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. The island was greatly expanded with landfill between 1892 and 1934. Before that, the much smaller original island was the...
in New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, there were few restrictions on immigration from Cuba, and the restrictions that existed were laxly enforced at the port of Tampa.
With few impediments, the flow of Cuban and Spanish workers and their families back and forth between Florida and Cuba was both substantial and largely undocumented. Despite V.M. Ybor's efforts to anchor his employees in Tampa through home ownership, many Ybor City cigar workers were still open to heading back to Cuba to seek out better wages and conditions into the 1890s. Due to this divided national loyalty, it would be years before many of the early residents of Ybor City became American citizens, and many never saw reason to apply at all. In the largely insular community, immigrants could live surrounded by their own culture, so attachment to their countries of origin remained high, especially in the first generation.
Diversification
The population of Ybor City diversified through the late 1880s and early 1890s as an influx of Italian immigrants began to arrive. Almost all of them were originally from the poverty-stricken Sicilian
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
towns of Alessandria Della Rocca
Alessandria della Rocca
Alessandria della Rocca is a comune and small agricultural town located in west central Sicily in the northern part of the Province of Agrigento, in Italy. Many of the town's inhabitants emigrated to the United States, particularly Tampa, Florida, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries....
and Santo Stefano Quisquina
Santo Stefano Quisquina
Santo Stefano Quisquina is a comune in the Province of Agrigento in the Italian region Sicily, located about 60 km south of Palermo and about 35 km north of Agrigento...
, though many had first tried to find work in New Orleans, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, or the sugar cane fields of the Kissimmee
Kissimmee, Florida
Kissimmee is a city in Osceola County, Florida, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 59,682. It is the county seat of Osceola County...
/St. Cloud
St. Cloud, Florida
St. Cloud is a city in Osceola County, Florida, United States. The population was 35,183 at the 2010 census. St. Cloud is closely associated with the adjacent city of Kissimmee and its proximity to Orlando area theme parks, including Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando Resort, and Seaworld.St...
area in central Florida
Central Florida
Central Florida is a regional designation for the area surrounding Orlando in east central Florida, United States. The area represents the third largest population concentration in Florida, after the South Florida and Tampa Bay regions, respectively....
before relocating to Tampa. Arriving around the same time were a small number of Jewish immigrants, mainly Romanians and Germans escaping religious persecution and looking for economic opportunities.
Not having cigar making experience, they were unable to break into the tightly self-regulated industry in any numbers. As they tried to learn Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
(the language of Ybor City) and English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
(the language of the rest of Tampa), they initially took whatever work they could find. Eventually, many opened businesses catering to the cigar factories and their workers. Most notable among these were successful grocery, clothing, and general goods stores; cigar box
Cigar box
Cigar boxes are popular juggling props. Their rectangular shape resembles that of its namesake; they are sometimes padded on the ends and/or the sides with a felt-like material....
and cigar box art firms; and vegetable and dairy farms established in rural areas a few miles east of the city.
“Cuba Libre’’
Cuban War of Independence
Cuban War of Independence was the last of three liberation wars that Cuba fought against Spain, the other two being the Ten Years' War and the Little War...
was a topic of intense interest and constant tension in the immigrant community.
The issue had caused controversy right from the start. In 1886, Vicente Martinez-Ybor’s cigar factory had been the first to be built and equipped. However, the start of production was delayed because his Cuban workers refused to work for a Spanish foreman who had earned an anti-Cuban reputation in Key West. Only after the offending supervisor was replaced (and after Ignacio Haya’s factory had already rolled the first Ybor City cigars) would V.M. Ybor’s workers return to their benches.
When Cuba seemed poised to erupt again in the early 1890s, Ybor City became a vital source of funds, equipment, and inspiration for the independence-seekers. "El dia pa la patria" ("one day for the homeland") - donating one day's pay per week to the Cuban cause - became a patriotic duty for Tampa's Cuban population, with some of their Italian, Jewish, and even Spanish neighbors chipping in.
Jose Marti
José Martí
José Julián Martí Pérez was a Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. In his short life he was a poet, an essayist, a journalist, a revolutionary philosopher, a translator, a professor, a publisher, and a political theorist. He was also a part of the Cuban...
, the "Apostle of Cuban Independence", visited Ybor City and West Tampa many times, delivering several passionate speeches to audiences of thousands. One 1893 speech from the steps of Ybor's factory was reprinted in newspapers all over the US and Cuba and led directly to war. A few Tampa residents volunteered to fight alongside Marti in Cuba, and many lost their lives in 1895 during the same skirmish that killed their inspirational leader.
Donations and organizing continued among Tampa's Latin population through 1898, when the US entered the ongoing struggle and it escalated into the larger Spanish–American War. Henry Plant used his contacts in the War Department
United States Department of War
The United States Department of War, also called the War Department , was the United States Cabinet department originally responsible for the operation and maintenance of the United States Army...
to make Tampa the main port of embarkation for US forces on their way to the conflict, providing a huge economic boost both to his railroad line and to Tampa as a whole. Over 30,000 troops (about double Tampa's total population at the time) and thousands of railcars full of supplies arrived to await orders to ship out, providing sudden prosperity for local businesses but stretching the small town's resources to the limit.
The troops were particularly welcome in Ybor City by Cubans who surmised that "Cuba Libre" was finally within reach. They were correct. The war lasted only a few months, and ended with Spain losing most of her remaining colonial possessions.
Some Cubans jubilantly left Tampa for their homeland, eager to enjoy the fruits of their long-fought revolution. However, most of these would eventually return. The main factors in their decision was the lack of economic opportunities and general devastation resulting from years of conflict, and the realization that Spanish colonial control had simply been replaced by American neo-colonial control. As a group, they overwhelmingly choose to put down roots and settle in Ybor City for the long term, though some migration for family and work reasons continued.
The “Golden Age”: 1902-1929
With the turn of the 20th Century, the perception of Ybor City residents had evolved. Previously, many residents had thought of Tampa as a temporary place to work and live; a refuge from the political and/or economic troubles in their homelands. By the early 1900s, however, attitudes had changed. Ybor City had become a permanent home.One major factor was the neighborhood's high quality of life. Like most immigrant communities at the time, Ybor City had everything a recent arrival could need: work, shops, schools, churches, and most importantly, other immigrants who shared the language and customs of the old country. But unlike most U.S. immigrant enclaves of the period, Ybor City was no slum
Slum
A slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...
.
The "Latin" residents of Ybor City created a bustling community that combined Cuban, Spanish, Italian, and Jewish culture into a unique mix. “Ybor City is Tampa’s Spanish India,” observed a visitor to the area, “What a colorful, screaming, shrill, and turbulent world.” But it took more than pride to turn a sand-clogged primitive village into a thriving neighborhood; it took the financial resources of a prosperous industry.
During the first decades of the 20th century, the port duties and the payrolls of Tampa's cigar manufacturers were the engine that made the city grow and prosper. Cigar workers, especially experienced rollers of the finer cigar varieties, made a good wage and could afford to frequent the many shops in downtown Tampa and in Ybor City's commercial district centered on 7th Avenue (La Séptima). The tabaquero culture emphasized professionalism and encouraged "tasteful appreciation of the finer things in life", much to the appreciation of Tampa's shopkeepers.
By pumping out hundreds of millions of hand-rolled cigars annually (the peak was 500,000,000 in 1929, right before the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
took hold), the cigar workers of Ybor City not only made a good life for themselves, but also pumped millions of dollars into the coffers of local businesses and city government.
The Mutual Aid Societies (Social Clubs)
Some of the proceeds of prosperity were used to improve life for the residents of Ybor City itself. The best example of this were the mutual aid societies / social clubs, which have been called the “heart” of Ybor City.The longest-lasting of these organizations were the Deutscher-Americaner (German-American Club), L’Unione Italiana (Italian Club), La Union Martí-Maceo, Circulo Cubano (Cuban Club)
Circulo Cubano de Tampa
El Circulo Cubano de Tampa is a historic site in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida. It is located at Palm Avenue and 14th Street. On November 15, 1972, it was added to the U.S...
, El Centro Español
El Centro Espanol de Tampa
El Centro Español de Tampa is a historic building in the Ybor City neighborhood of Tampa, in the U.S. state of Florida. Built as an ethnic and cultural clubhouse in 1912, the red brick structure situated at 1526–1536 East 7th Avenue is today part of a shopping and entertainment complex...
, and El Centro Asturiano
Centro Asturiano de Tampa
The Centro Asturiano is a historic site in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida. It is located at 1913 Nebraska Avenue. On July 24, 1974, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. It was designed by Tampa architect M...
. These clubs were founded in Ybor City's early days (the 1st had been the Centro Español in 1891) as places were new arrivals could find support and community among other people from their country of origin. As time went on, they offered a broader range of social and entertainment opportunities.
Despite the immigrant element, Ybor City’s mutual aid clubs had less in common with aid associations such as Hull House
Hull House
Hull House is a settlement house in the United States that was co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Located in the Near West Side of , Hull House opened its doors to the recently arrived European immigrants. By 1911, Hull House had grown to 13 buildings. In 1912 the Hull...
and other settlement houses than with benefit societies
Benefit society
A benefit society or mutual aid society is an organization or voluntary association formed to provide mutual aid, benefit or insurance for relief from sundry difficulties...
and fraternal organizations
Fraternity
A fraternity is a brotherhood, though the term usually connotes a distinct or formal organization. An organization referred to as a fraternity may be a:*Secret society*Chivalric order*Benefit society*Friendly society*Social club*Trade union...
. Ybor City’s social clubs were founded by immigrants for the benefit of immigrants - the funds to build the large and often opulent clubhouses and to operate the organizations came from dues collected from members, usually about 5% of a member's salary.
Besides medical care, the clubs offered many social activities. Club buildings housed gymnasiums, cantinas (small cafés for members), and large auditoriums for concerts and often elaborate theatrical performances. They also organized events such as dances and picnics, sometimes hiring buses for outings at Ballast Point Park, Clearwater Beach
Clearwater Beach
Clearwater Beach is a resort area located on the Gulf of Mexico in Pinellas County on the west central coast of Florida in the United States. It is a part of the city of Clearwater. The geographic latitude is 27.57 N and longitude 82.48 W...
, or other locations outside of Ybor City itself. An active club filled a family’s social calendar, and collectively, they served as extended families and communal gathering places for generations of Ybor City residents.
Though racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
among the residents of Ybor City was not generally an issue, it was situated in the American Deep South
Deep South
The Deep South is a descriptive category of the cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states which were most dependent on plantation type agriculture during the pre-Civil War period...
in the era of Jim Crow
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
, so its organizations had to follow the segregationist laws of Tampa. Ybor's Cuban immigrants were often racially mixed, and skin tones within families might cover a range of human colorations. Local law, however, required that darker-skinned and lighter-skinned people not socialize publicly.
Urban renewal
Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Renewal has had both successes and failures. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of...
program attempted to redevelop Ybor City, their club building was the only one to be demolished.
El Centro Asturiano was originally founded by immigrants from Asturias, a province of northern Spain, who split from the Centro Español and formed a Tampa branch of El Centro Asturiano Club of Havana
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana
The National Museum of Fine Arts of Havana in Havana, Cuba is a museum of Fine Arts that exhibits Cuban art collections from the colonial times up to contemporary generations. It was founded on February 23, 1913 due to the efforts of its first director, Emilio Heredia, a well-known architect...
. However, unlike the other clubs, membership was soon opened to all people of Latin decent who wanted to join. Because of this and the fact that the club built a well-respected hospital, it consistently had the largest membership of all the clubs.
Decline
With the emptying of Ybor City in the 1950s and 60s and the passing away of the first generations of immigrants, club membership dwindled and the clubs' offerings and amenities fell accordingly. Over the years, some of the them ceased operations altogether.The German-American Club shut down due to anti-German sentiments before WWII. Its building was used by the Young Men's Hebrew Association for several decades, and was subsequently purchased and remodeled by the city of Tampa in the late 1990s for office space. El Centro Español ceased operations in the late 1980s. After sitting vacant for several years, its building on 7th Ave. was restored and is now part of the Centro Ybor shopping/entertainment complex. The Marti-Maceo Club is still somewhat active, but its original building was demolished in 1965.
The remaining clubs (the Cuban and Italian Clubs and the Centro Asturiano) have greatly reduced their benefits and focus their resources on preserving their history and buildings. All have been at least partially restored using club dues, rental fees on their ballrooms and theaters, and various grants.
El Lector
One tradition that the tabaqueros brought with them from cigar factories in Cuba was that of El Lector (The Reader). Because the job of rolling cigar after cigar could become monotonous, the workers wanted something to occupy and stimulate the mind. Thus arose the tradition of "lectors", who sat perched on an elevated platform in the cigar factory, reading to the workers.Typically, the lector would start the day reading local Spanish newspapers and some fiction, such as a romance or adventure novel. Since most residents of Ybor were very interested in politics, the lector would then usually move on to political treatises or writings about the current events in Cuba or Spain or other countries. In the afternoon, the selection was often a literary novel, such as Don Quixote or other works of classic literature. (In Nilo Cruz
Nilo Cruz
Nilo Cruz is an Cuban-American playwright and pedagogue. With his award of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play, Anna in the Tropics, he became the first Latino so honored.-Early years:...
's Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
The Pulitzer Prize for Drama was first awarded in 1918.From 1918 to 2006, the Drama Prize was unlike the majority of the other Pulitzer Prizes: during these years, the eligibility period for the drama prize ran from March 2 to March 1, to reflect the Broadway 'season' rather than the calendar year...
-winning play Anna in the Tropics
Anna in the Tropics
Anna in the Tropics is a play by Nilo Cruz.When Cuban immigrants brought the cigar-making industry to Florida in the 19th Century, they carried with them another tradition. As the workers toiled away in the factory hand rolling each cigar, the lector, , would read to them...
set in Ybor City, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger...
is read.) Because of the lector system, even cigar workers who could not read were exposed to classic literature and were conversant on political philosophy and current events both in Ybor City and around the world.
Lectors were well respected and often highly educated. Most could look at text written in English or Italian and read it aloud in Spanish, the language of the factories. The lectors were hired and fired by the tabaqueros, not the factory owners. Their salary was paid directly by the workers through a small deduction from everyone’s weekly earnings. Despite the cost, the tabaqueros enthusiastically sustained the lector tradition.
Most factory owners were less supportive. They felt that the lectors stirred up their workforce by fostering “radical ideas”. News of labor conditions or problems in other locations, especially, led to worker walkouts and protests on many occasions. More than one owner tried to ban lectors from his factory floor, leading to bitter strikes as his employees fought for their “right” to have a lector.
The lectors would remain fixtures in Tampa’s cigar factories until 1921, when several owners negotiated the removal of the lectors as part of an agreement to end a labor strike. At the end of a particularly bitter strike in 1931, workers in all Ybor City and West Tampa cigar factories were forced to agree to the removal of lectors
Some of the lectors continued to speak to the cigar workers in other ways. Victoriano Manteiga, for example, founded La Gaceta
La Gaceta
La Gaceta is a weekly newspaper in Tampa, Florida, founded in 1922. Published in English, Spanish, and Italian, it is the only trilingual newspaper in the United States....
, a tri-lingual (English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, and Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
) newspaper which is still published by his grandson in Tampa. Some took other jobs, becoming teachers or regular tabaqueros. Some went to Cuba to seek lector positions in factories which still allowed the practice.
Organized Crime
BolitaBolita
Bolita , is a type of lottery which was popular in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries in Cuba and among Florida's working class Hispanic, Italian, and black population. In the basic bolita game, 100 small numbered balls are placed into a bag and mixed thoroughly, and bets are taken on which...
was an illegal lottery game run by organized criminals that was very popular in Tampa, especially Ybor City, during the first half of the 20th century. While many people played and everybody knew about them, these games operated with virtual impunity due to bribes and kickbacks to key local politicians and law enforcement officials. Charlie Wall, a member of a prominent "Anglo
Anglo
Anglo is a prefix indicating a relation to the Angles, England or the English people, as in the terms Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-American, Anglo-Celtic, Anglo-African and Anglo-Indian. It is often used alone, somewhat loosely, to refer to people of British Isles descent in The Americas, Australia and...
" Tampa family and son of a former mayor, organized the game into a large profit-making (and still illegal) business in the late 1920s and expanded into other questionable ventures from his base of operations in Ybor City.
The 1930s were a time of rampant corruption in Tampa, with many accusations of stolen elections and mayors on the payrolls of rival organized crime factions. After a time known locally as the “Era of Blood” in which local criminal interests fought over control, Santo Trafficante, Sr.
Santo Trafficante, Sr.
Santo Trafficante, Sr. was a Sicilian-born mobster, and father of the powerful mobster Santo Trafficante, Jr.-Early life:...
pushed Wall aside and emerged as Tampa and Ybor City’s leading crime boss in the 1940s. Later, his son Santo Trafficante, Jr.
Santo Trafficante, Jr.
Santo Trafficante, Jr. was one of the last of the old-time Mafia bosses in the United States. He allegedly controlled organized criminal operations in Florida and Cuba, which had previously been consolidated from several rival gangs by his father, Santo Trafficante, Sr...
allegedly extended the family’s influence far beyond the area.
This era of rampant corruption wound down with increased federal law enforcement efforts beginning in the 1950s. Although few of the resulting trials resulted in convictions and some mob-related activity continued, the sense of lawlessness in Ybor City and Tampa in general gradually diminished.
The Depression Era
The markedly decreased demand for cigars during the Great DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
of the 1930s had serious consequences for Ybor City. Many smokers found themselves unable to afford luxury items and switched to cheaper cigarettes, weakening the neighborhood's dominant industry and starting the area on a slow economic and social decline.
As occurred elsewhere, many businesses laid off workers or closed altogether and many banks failed. To help keep food on the table during hard times, many residents of Ybor City plowed under their yards or vacant lots to plant vegetables and bought cows, goats, and chickens to provide milk, eggs, and meat for the family, with any surplus sold around town. (Interestingly, the descendants of those chickens still roam the area.
Tampa and the Spanish Civil War
During the Spanish Civil WarSpanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
of 1936-1939, the cry of "No pasaran!" energized Ybor City much as the cause of Cuba Libre had done so 40 years previously. The community overwhelmingly supported the democratically elected government of Republican Spain
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
in its fight against the fascist uprising led by General Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
, and many residents donated 10% of their salary and tons of old clothes to the Republican cause. A cigar worker turned the slogan of the Republicans, No parasan! (They shall not pass!), into a song which was sung at rallies in both Tampa and in Spain, and a handful of the most ardent supporters joined the fighting as members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
Abraham Lincoln Brigade
The Abraham Lincoln Brigade refers to volunteers from the United States who served in the Spanish Civil War in the International Brigades. They fought for Spanish Republican forces against Franco and the Spanish Nationalists....
.
The news that Franco's forces had triumphed in 1939 was crushing news in Ybor City. Besides the disappointment about the failure of a fervently supported cause, the end of the war cut many ties between Spanish residents of Ybor City and their mostly Republican families back in Spain. In some cases, their relatives had been killed, either during the war or in Franco's post-war purge of political opponents. In other cases, Franco's tightening control and the coming of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
made communication difficult or impossible. In either case, links back to the mother country, which had been waning as the second generation of Ybor City residents came of age, were further weakened.
Post World War II
After World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the slow decline of the neighborhood which had begun in the early 1930s accelerated, as veterans returning home from service found a neighborhood with little economic opportunity and little prospects for improvement, leading many to relocate outside of Ybor City. Several factors played a role in that process.
For one, the worldwide demand for cigars had not returned to pre-Depression levels, and many factories that had closed in the 1930s remained shuttered and empty. By 1945, the cigar industry in Tampa employed less than half the number of the workers than it had in 1935, when the Depression had already decreased the workforce from the peak level of 1929.
The quantity and quality of jobs in the cigar industry would continue to fall as Tampa's manufacturers underwent a near-universal shift to mechanization
Mechanization
Mechanization or mechanisation is providing human operators with machinery that assists them with the muscular requirements of work or displaces muscular work. In some fields, mechanization includes the use of hand tools...
. Replacing traditional hand-rolled cigars with machine-made varieties allowed cigar firms to employ fewer workers and pay them less. Even when demand quickly increased to record levels during American's post-war boom
Post-World War II economic expansion
The post–World War II economic expansion, also known as the postwar economic boom, the long boom, and the Golden Age of Capitalism, was a period of economic prosperity in the mid 20th century, which occurred mainly in western countries, followed the end of World War II in 1945, and lasted until the...
, the number of workers employed in Ybor City's factories continued to decrease due to more efficient machines. By then, Tampa's economy was buoyed by other industries such as shipping and tourism. However, little new activity had replaced cigar manufacturing in Ybor City, and job seekers often had to look elsewhere for employment.
Another issue in Ybor City after World War II was the aging of the area’s housing stock. New construction had all but stopped during the Depression and the war, and thousands of homes built during the neighborhood's era of rapid growth around 1900 were still in use. These old wooden structures were becoming dilapidated and were thus not particularly attractive to first-time home buyers such as returning veterans, who tended to gravitate to West Tampa or the booming suburb
Suburb
The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...
s of Tampa.
The Veterans Administration
United States Department of Veterans Affairs
The United States Department of Veterans Affairs is a government-run military veteran benefit system with Cabinet-level status. It is the United States government’s second largest department, after the United States Department of Defense...
encouraged this trend by offering mortgage
Mortgage loan
A mortgage loan is a loan secured by real property through the use of a mortgage note which evidences the existence of the loan and the encumbrance of that realty through the granting of a mortgage which secures the loan...
loans on new homes at very favorable rates to returning vets. Since there were few new homes or empty lots for new construction available in Ybor City, veterans who wanted a VA loan were also pushed to buy elsewhere.
Finally, the G.I. Bill made it possible for many Ybor City-born veterans to get a college education and start a career outside of the dying local cigar industry. While many of these eventually settled back in Tampa after finishing school, few could find suitable employment in their old neighborhood and relocated as well.
For all these reasons, Ybor City’s WWII generation was the first to leave the area in large numbers since Vicente Martinez-Ybor had first cleared the scrubland in 1885.
Mass Demolition
Nick Nuccio
Mayor of Tampa 1956-1959, 1963-1967Nick Chillura Nuccio was a two-time mayor of Tampa, Florida in the 1950s and 60s...
and Dick Greco, became the first “Latins” to serve as mayor of Tampa.
Despite this newfound political clout, Ybor City stagnated and declined. As its cigar industry continued to consolidate, mechanize, and cut workforce, its population steadily moved to other parts of Tampa (especially West Tampa
West Tampa, Florida
West Tampa is one of the oldest districts within the city limits of Tampa, USA, and a former incorporated city located west of the Hillsborough River and downtown Tampa. As of the 2000 census, the district had a population of 22,008...
) or out of the Tampa area altogether.
A few cigar manufacturers had tried to keep the hand-rolled tradition alive. However, that became almost impossible in the early 1960s, when the United States embargo against Cuba
United States embargo against Cuba
The United States embargo against Cuba is a commercial, economic, and financial embargo partially imposed on Cuba in October 1960...
cut off access to the Cuban tobacco which had supplied Ybor City’s factories for almost 80 years. An era had come to an end, and the neighborhood became a collection of vacant cigar factories, empty storefronts, and deserted sidewalks.
The Federal Urban Renewal
Urban renewal
Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Renewal has had both successes and failures. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of...
Program of the 1960s were supposed to revitalize Ybor City with new residences and businesses designed to attract tourists to “Tampa’s Latin Quarter” (a nod to the French Quarter
French Quarter
The French Quarter, also known as Vieux Carré, is the oldest neighborhood in the city of New Orleans. When New Orleans was founded in 1718 by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, the city was originally centered on the French Quarter, or the Vieux Carré as it was known then...
in New Orleans). Thousands of remaining residents were forced to move as entire blocks of old homes, business, and cigar factories were razed. Due to a lack of funds and political will, however, the replacement construction never took place, and old buildings were replaced by empty lots.
Another blow was the construction of Interstate 4
Interstate 4
Interstate 4 is a intrastate Highway located entirely within the state of Florida, United States. It goes from Interstate 275 in Tampa, Florida to Interstate 95 at Daytona Beach, Florida . It also has the Florida Department of Transportation designation of State Road 400, but only a small...
, which cut east-west across the approximate center of the neighborhood. Besides resulting in the demolition of even more homes and other structures, the highway cut most of the north-south routes through the area.
Empty lots, empty plans
After federal dollars dried up in the late 1960s, local leaders came up with many ideas to revitalize the neighborhood. Several proposals sought to convert vacant land and buildings into urban residences, shopping areas, or tourist attractions. (Mayor Greco suggested digging canals and importing gandolasGondola
The gondola is a traditional, flat-bottomed Venetian rowing boat, well suited to the conditions of the Venetian Lagoon. For centuries gondolas were the chief means of transportation and most common watercraft within Venice. In modern times the iconic boats still have a role in public transport in...
. ) None of them got past the planning stages.
Perhaps the most memorable idea was a 1967 scheme to convert the center of the neighborhood into an "Old Spain"-themed attraction enclosed in a medieval "walled city" and featuring "bloodless" bullfighting
Bullfighting
Bullfighting is a traditional spectacle of Spain, Portugal, southern France and some Latin American countries , in which one or more bulls are baited in a bullring for sport and entertainment...
. Organizers staged an exhibition bullfight, but the bull escaped and had to be killed by a sheriff's deputy with a high-powered rifle. The theme park proposal died along with the bull.
By the early 1970s, very few businesses and residents remained in the formerly bustling commercial center of Ybor City around 7th Avenue, most notably the Columbia Restaurant
Columbia Restaurant
The original Columbia Restaurant, located in the historic Ybor City neighborhood in Tampa, Florida, is the oldest Spanish restaurant in the United States and one of the largest in the world...
The northern portion of the neighborhood (now known as V.M. Ybor
V.M. Ybor, Tampa, Florida
V.M. Ybor is a neighborhood within the city limits of Tampa, Florida. As of the 2000 census the neighborhood had a population of 3,010. The ZIP Codes serving the neighborhood are 33602, 33603, and 33605....
), which had been separated by I-4, still had a substantial population, but a clear demographic shift occurred. The area changed from predominately middle-class Latino
Latino
The demonyms Latino and Latina , are defined in English language dictionaries as:* "a person of Latin-American descent."* "A Latin American."* "A person of Hispanic, especially Latin-American, descent, often one living in the United States."...
to predominately working poor
Working poor
- Definition in the United States :There are several popular definitions of "working poor" in the United States. According to the US Department of Labor, the working poor "are persons who spent at least 27 weeks [in the past year] in the labor force , but whose incomes fell below the official...
African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
, and many of the new residents lived in decades-old wooden homes which had survived Urban Renewal.
Redevelopment
Gentrification
Gentrification and urban gentrification refer to the changes that result when wealthier people acquire or rent property in low income and working class communities. Urban gentrification is associated with movement. Consequent to gentrification, the average income increases and average family size...
.
By the early 1990s, many of these same old brick buildings on 7th Avenue had been converted into bars, restaurants, nightclubs, and other nightlife attractions. The crowds grew until portions of the old neighborhood became a nighttime carnival, especially on weekends. The city built parking garages and closed 7th Ave. to traffic to deal with the sudden explosion of visitors.
Despite the positive aspects, some residents and leaders became concerned about the disruption from the revelry and traffic. Since around 2000, the City of Tampa has encouraged a broader emphasis in development. A family-oriented shopping complex and movie theater (Centro Ybor) has opened in the former Centro Español social club. New apartments, condominiums and a hotel have been built on the empty lots, along with residences and hotels now occupying restored buildings. In 2009, IKEA
IKEA
IKEA is a privately held, international home products company that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture such as beds and desks, appliances and home accessories. The company is the world's largest furniture retailer...
opened Florida's largest IKEA
IKEA
IKEA is a privately held, international home products company that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture such as beds and desks, appliances and home accessories. The company is the world's largest furniture retailer...
store on 22nd Street just north of the Selmon Expressway
Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway
The Lee Roy Selmon Expressway, originally known as the Southern Crosstown Expressway is a all-electronic, limited access toll road in Hillsborough County, Florida, It connects the South Tampa neighborhood near MacDill Air Force Base with Downtown Tampa and the bedroom community of Brandon...
. People were moving back to the area around once-vibrant 7th Avenue for the first time in many years.
The recovery has not impacted different portions of historic Ybor City equally nor at the same rate. While the once-abandoned commercial district south of Interstate 4 underwent much redevelopment during the 1990s, populated areas north of I-4 and east of 22nd St. did not. Despite years of public and private attempts to spur economic growth, urban decay and high poverty have long been widespread in this area, with hundreds of decades-old homes which survived Urban Renewal still in use .
From 2000 to 2009, however, gentrification and redevelopment slowly began to spread to the current V.M. Ybor neighborhood located just north of I-4 from the Ybor City Historic District. During the period, the poverty rate in this area dropped from over 40% to about 13% .
External links
- Ybor City State Museum
- Ybor City Guide from tbo.com (Tampa Tribune)
- Tampa Bay History Center
- Video walking tour of Ybor City
- Brief History of Ybor City
- Ybor City in Photographic Topics
- Ybor City Collection, The University of South Florida-Tampa Special Collections Department
- “Ybor City: Cigar Capital of the World”, a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan
- University of South Florida Libraries: The Columbia Restaurant & Gonzmart Family Collection
- Centro Asturiano Club
- The Cuban Club