There are many places in the world that are apparently built for cigars, places with tobacco factories and paved roads, places where the leaves bloom freely and the cigars are always burning. One of these places is Ybor City. Now known as a hotspot for bars and nightclubs, Ybor City was once known as the Cigar Capital of the World.
Ybor City is a historic district in Tampa, Florida. It is named after Vincent Martinez Ybor, a Spaniard who immigrated to Cuba at the age of 14. Starting out as a cigar salesman, Vincent Ybor eventually began making the cigars he previously sold: he opened his own cigar factory in Havana. But, this time in Havana it was a time of unrest and a time on the brink of war. As the Cuban Revolution raged, Vincent Ybor moved his factory and his workers to Key West, Florida.
The success of the relocation fluctuated: Ybor’s business was profitable, but labor and transportation problems prevented any real success. A friend of Ybor’s, Gavino Gutierrez, convinced him to look into Tampa as a place to establish cigar roots. Tampa offered the climate, water, and transportation necessary for a productive operation.
Ybor sold on the idea of Tampa and bought a large acreage of land in 1886 and not only started a business but also founded a city. This area, built for the purpose of housing Ybor’s factories and workers, became appropriately known as Ybor City.
Following Ybor’s lead, other cigar manufacturers moved into this area, and by the end of the 19th century, Ybor City and Tampa had the honor of being the largest cigar manufacturer in the world. Not to be outdone by the expansion of the industry it possessed, the area itself also experienced a population boom. When Tampa incorporated Ybor City into the borough, the population skyrocketed to 3,000, three years later that number nearly doubled.
It was truly the home of the cigar industry. Most residents made a living making cigars, and those who were not cigar rollers often found work in a cigar-related trade. Some made cigar boxes and some made cigar bands, some owned restaurants where “No Smoking” signs never hung in the window. It was also a melting pot of cultures, home to a variety of Spanish, Italian, African and Cuban immigrants. For many, English was a second language. It was this diversity of groups that took over the cigar industry, setting the bodybuilding pace of worldly luxury.
As more factories were built, Ybor City became the headquarters for cigar production, surpassing even Havana. At the center of this was Ybor: he offered help and monetary gains to the real manufacturers of Cuba. In the 1900s, Ybor City was known as the “Cigar Capital of the World.”
Ybor City continued to grow and prosper, but the world around it did not. The Great Depression, the popularity of cigarettes, the prevalence of organized crime in the area, and the introduction of cigar-rolling machinery led to the demise of Ybor City. This was compounded when owners of machine-made cigars began a “Spit Campaign”, a campaign claiming that cigar rollers’ saliva often found its way into a finished cigar. This drastically hurt businesses based on hand-rolling cigars and by the 1930s, when machines replaced workers and Cubans returned to their homeland, Ybor City was no longer the capital.
There was an attempt to preserve the history and culture of the area. Currently, it is one of only three National Historic Landmark districts in Florida. A place still worth visiting, it is no longer the cigar Mecca it once was; the ashes of his former life rested in a permanent part of cigar history.
