page_title: History of Ybor City
section_title: The "Golden Age": 1902–1929
hierarchical_section_title: History of Ybor City / The "Golden Age": 1902–1929
caption_attribution_description: English: La Union Italiana (The Italian Club) today, Ybor City, Tampa
context_page_description: Ybor City is a historic neighborhood that includes the Ybor City Historic District in Tampa, Florida. It is located just northeast of downtown Tampa and north of Port Tampa Bay. The neighborhood has distinct architectural, culinary, cultural, and historical legacy that reflects its multi-ethnic composition. It was unique in the American South as a prosperous manufacturing community built and populated almost entirely by immigrants.
  Ybor City 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 original population was mostly composed of Cuban and Spanish immigrants who worked in the cigar factories. Italian and Eastern-European Jewish immigrants followed shortly thereafter and established many retail shops, farms and grocery stores, box factories, print shops, and other enterprises which catered to the cigar industry and its workers.
  Martinez-Ybor started the practice of building small houses, "casitas", that his workers could buy at cost, in order to increase staff retention. He also helped to ensure medical care and paved the local streets and sidewalks.
context_section_description: 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.
  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." Distinctive red brick and iron balconied architecture cuisine, such as the deviled crab, emerged. 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.
caption: L'Unione Italiana (The Italian Club)
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