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Ybor City

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Ybor City
Neighborhood
Centro Ybor complex with a TECO Line car passing in front
Centro Ybor complex with a TECO Line car passing in front
Nickname: 
Florida's Latin Quarter
CountryUnited States
StateFlorida
CountyHillsborough County
CityTampa
Founded1885
Incorporation into Tampa1887
Time zoneUTC-5 (EST)
 • Summer (DST)UTC-4 (EDT)
Websitehttp://www.yboronline.com/

Ybor City (Template:PronEng) (EE-borh) is a historic neighborhood in Tampa, Florida, located just northeast of downtown; it is also known as Tampa's Latin Quarter. Development began in 1885 by a group of cigar manufacturers led by Vicente Martinez-Ybor, and was originally populated by immigrants, mainly from Cuba, Spain, and Italy. The community is notable for its mutual aid societies and active labor organizations; these were virtually unique in the American South of the time.

Cigar factories were the major employers during the first half century until a decline during the Great Depression, when the immigrant population began a slow migration from the area which accelerated after World War II. However, recent trends have reversed the abandonment and decay. Beginning in the late 1980s, the area around the old Ybor City business district was redeveloped into a popular night club and entertainment district. Portions of the old neighborhood have been designated as a National Historic Landmark District, and several buildings in the area are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

History

See also: History of Tampa, Florida

The founding of Ybor City

File:Ybor statue.jpg
Statue of Don Vicente Martinez Ybor in Centro Ybor.

Ybor City came into existence as a direct result of a New York City 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.[1][2][3]

The trip was long and difficult. The railroad ended in Sanford (near present-day Orlando), and the rest of the trip was across the state by stagecoach over unpaved country roads.[4]

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. However, Henry Plant was in the process of extending his 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 rapid development once the rail line was complete.[5][6]

Gutierrez returned to New York by sea, stopping on the way to visit his friend Don Vicente Martinez Ybor at his home in Key West. Ybor was a fellow Spaniard who had built a thriving cigar-making operation in Havana, Cuba based on his El Príncipe de Gales (Prince of Wales) brand.[7] However, Ybor had provided 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.[8]

Ybor reestablished his cigar business in Key West, but was not satisfied with his situation in the island city. High costs, labor strife and transportation issues ( overseas land links were still decades away) had him exploring relocation options. Several southern American port cities such as Mobile, Alabama; Pensacola, Florida, and Galveston, Texas offered land and other concessions to attract Ybor’s factories to their town, but none of the proposals were satisfactory.[9]

When Gutierrez arrived, he mentioned his recent visit to Tampa. Ybor agreed that Tampa, with its warm climate and new rail line, was another possible relocation destination. He was impressed enough with the possibility that he immediately took Gutierrez to see Ignacio Haya, a Spanish cigar manufacturer from New York who happened to be in Key West as well. Haya was also looking to relocate his factories, mainly due to concerns about labor unions and the northern climate’s effect on tobacco leaves.[10]

Haya and Ybor boarded the next available steamship leaving for Tampa and arrived at dawn the next day. A tour of the area convinced them that Gutierrez has been right. 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.[11][12][13]

Ybor had received incentive offers from other cities by this time, so he did not move hastily. His emissaries negotiated with Tampa’s Board of Trade for the next several months, hoping to secure land and other concessions. In September 1885, Ybor and Haya set out on a “fact-finding mission” to several potential relocation sites, hoping to finalize a deal and begin moving their operations soon thereafter.[14] Their first visit was to Tampa, where the sticking point in the discussion was the price of a 40 acre tract of land that Ybor wished to purchase from a private owner. The owner wanted $9000, but Ybor was only willing to pay $5000.[15][16][17]

Seemingly at an impasse, Ybor and Haya prepared to move on to Galveston, Texas. But on October 5, 1885, as the businessmen were literally about to depart, the Tampa Board of Trade offered to subsidize the $4000 difference in the price of land.[18][19] Ybor agreed to the deal. He also purchased 50 more adjoining acres, and Haya soon bought his own smaller tract.

Preparation for moving their cigar operations began immediately. Ybor invited Gavino Gutierrez to come to Tampa and lay out a street grid for a new town, which was to be dubbed Ybor City. On October 8, only three days after the deals were made, work got underway clearing the land.[20]

There was almost a major crisis before the town was even started. A branch of the Jacksonville-based First National Bank was the only bank in Tampa, but bank management had decided to close the Tampa location due to the stagnant state of commercial business in town. 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, and the crisis was averted. [21]

A different kind of 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.”[22] The trade was closely regulated by the tabaqueros in a manner reminiscent of the artisan’s guilds of old Europe.[23] Beginners trained through lengthy apprenticeships in the hopes of someday becoming a well-respected (and well-paid) master ‘’torcedor’’.[24]

Key West was home to thousands of trained tabaqueros in 1885. In contrast, Tampa was a small town with a population of about 3000 at the time with no resident cigar workers.[25] Ybor would have to convince workers 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’’[26][27], he realized that would not be enough.

Ybor’s idea was to build a modified company town. Unlike other communities built in the northern United States in which the company owned much of the housing and businesses in the town (such as Pullman, Illinois), Ybor envisioned a community in which employees could own their own homes and private entrepreneurs could buy land to start their own businesses. This, he hoped, would create a more pleasant environment for the residents of Ybor City.[28]

Ybor 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 and keep his factories busy year-round.

So along with the Ybor and Haya’s cigar factories, among the first structures built in Ybor City were 50 small houses (‘’casitas’’) for prospective employees.[29] 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)[30] were small wooden structures, but they were well-built and relatively comfortable.[31][32] Ybor offered them to prospective employees at a price just above the cost to build them (initially $400), payable in small deductions from their salary in the cigar factory.[33]

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 the new community by offering cheap land and a free factory building if they agreed to meet certain job-creation quotas.[34]

Even with these inducements, cigar workers and other cigar manufacturers were slow in coming to what was still a primitive settlement. When Ybor and Haya’s factories were almost ready to begin production in early 1886, they had less than 100 employees between them - few were willing to take the risk of moving to and buying a home in a place that may not last.[35]

In April 1886, Ybor City benefited from tragedy in Key West when fire raged through the island city. Hundreds of homes and several cigar factories were destroyed, including Ybor’s still-operational main building. Rather than rebuild in place, some tabaqueros decided to pack up their surviving belongings and board the steamship for Tampa.[36][37] More residents meant more amenities such as stores and cultural events, which in turn would attract more new residents, beginning a cycle that was to last for several decades.[38]

Ybor's 1st Cigar Factory, c1902.

The fire also encouraged several Key West cigar manufacturers to either relocate their main operations or build a branch factory in Ybor City, and more would follow from New York and Cuba. This would begin a steady increase in the number of new cigar factories and smaller storefront shops (“buckeyes”) that continued until the 1920s, when Ybor City was home to hundreds of cigar making businesses.[39][40]

On April 13, 1886, Haya’s factory produced the first Ybor City cigar. Ybor’s factory followed suit a few days later. By the end of the year, Ybor’s factory alone was producing 900,000 hand-rolled cigars per month[41], and more factories were opening all the time.

From frontier town to frontier neighborhood

By early 1887, Tampa city leaders had expressed concern about the lack of a police force in the rapidly growing immigrant community. They also saw the potential to greatly increase the city’s tax rolls from the sudden creation of wealth just a mile from downtown. So on June 2, 1887, the city of Tampa annexed Ybor City over the protestations of Ybor himself, who felt that relinquishing civil authority would not add anything to his company town except new regulations and red tape.[42]

The annexation did not stunt Ybor City’s bustling growth, but it almost doubled Tampa’s population and city budget. By 1890, the population of Tampa had risen to over 5000. By 1900, it was almost 16,000. The vast majority of these new residents were immigrants who had settled in Ybor City.[43][44]

One factor that expedited Ybor City’s growth was United States immigration laws of the time. While thousands of immigrants from all over the world were funneled through (and some rejected at) major processing centers like San Francisco and New York’s Ellis Island, there were few restrictions on immigration from Cuba and even less enforcement of those restrictions in the ports of Tampa or Key West. [45]

As a result, the flow of new residents (both Cuban and Spanish) from Cuba to Ybor City was both constant and largely undocumented. It was years before most of the original citizens of Ybor City became official citizens of the United States, if ever. [46] Many never saw reason to apply, and loyalty to their countries of origin remained high. [47]

Life in Ybor City

The Ybor City that greeted the first arrivals was primitive, with quickly-built wooden structures (with the exception of Ybor’s imposing 3-story brick factory completed in 1888) and unpaved streets of thick sand that made travel difficult, especially by wagon. [48] As an early resident observed, “What we found when we arrived was a stinking hole with swamps and pestilence everywhere.” [49] By the turn of the century, however, the community had many fine brick buildings, brick-paved streets, a streetcar line, and vastly expanded cultural and social opportunities. 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.” [50]

Ybor City was unique among US immigrant communities at the time because of its high quality of life. Like many such communities, Ybor 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 many U.S. immigrant enclaves in the early 1900s, Ybor City was no "slum".

Cigar workers, especially experienced rollers of the finer cigar varieties, could earn high wages. As a result, Ybor City had the highest living standard of any working-class neighborhood in Tampa up to the 1920s, and its industry and residents pumped millions of dollars into the local economy.

Ybor City's factories regularly churned out hundreds of millions of cigars a year. In 1929, the peak year of production before the Great Depression hit, just over 500,000,000 cigars were hand- rolled by thousands of skilled tabaqueros.

The Mutual Aid Societies (Social Clubs)

L'Unione Italiana (The Italian Club) still stands on 7th Ave. in Ybor City

Mutual aid societies and social clubs were popular in Ybor City, including: the Deutscher-Americaner Club, L’Unione Italiana, La Union Marti-Maceo, Circulo Cubano, Centro Español, and Centro Asturiano. These clubs were founded in Ybor's early days (the 1st was the Centro Español in 1891) and were run on dues collected from their members, usually 5% of a member's salary. In exchange, members and their whole family received services including free libraries, educational programs, sports teams, restaurants, numerous social functions like dances and picnics, and free medical services. Beyond the services, these clubs served as extended families and communal gathering places for generations of Ybor's citizens.

The clubs' memberships were generally limited to specific ethnic backgrounds; the Italian Club, the Centro Español for Spaniards, etc. Centro Asturiano was founded by immigrants from Asturias, a province of northern Spain, who split-off from the Centro Español. Unlike the other clubs, membership was soon opened to all people of Latin descent, and it soon had the largest membership. Though membership is far smaller than it was before the 1950s, the Centro Asturiano is still the most active of the clubs today.

Tampa's racial laws limited social and other interactions between dark-skinned and light-skinned people. Ybor's Cuban community formed two social clubs: La Union Marti-Maceo for darker-skinned Cubans, and Circulo Cubano for those with lighter skin. Sometimes, members of the same family were awkwardly required to join different clubs.

El Lector

Ybor cigar rollers plying their craft c.1920. Note Lector on elevated reading platform, background right

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's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Anna in the Tropics, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is read.)

Lectors were highly educated and well respected; some could famously read a book in English or Italian, instantly translating it into Spanish, the language of the factories. They were paid by a weekly collection taken from the workers' salary, and the tabaqueros generally felt that it was worth the expense.

In fact, several long and bitter strikes took place when factory owners tried to ban the lectors from their factory floors, which they finally did in 1931, during the economic struggles of the Great Depression. But some of the lectors continued to speak to the cigar workers in other ways. Victoriano Manteiga, for example, founded La Gaceta, a tri-lingual newspaper which is still published by his grandson in Tampa.

Bolita

Bolita was an illegal lottery game run by organized criminals that was very popular in Ybor City (and all over Tampa) during the first half of the 20th century. These popular games operated with virtual impunity due to bribes and kickbacks to key local politicians and law enforcement officials. Fights for control of the operation sometimes led to murders or even open gang warfare. One of the operating gangs, the Trafficante family, eventually emerged as the leading crime organization in Tampa after World War II, with connections around the U.S. and heavy investment in pre-Castro Cuba through hotels and casinos. The era of corruption ended with a series of sensational trials involving public officials in the 1950s. Although the trials brought much negative national exposure to Tampa (and few mafia members were charged or convicted), they helped to reduce the sense of lawlessness in Ybor and Tampa in general.

Decline

File:Ybor Immigrant statue.jpg
Statue dedicated to the immigrants who built Ybor City, Centennial Park

The decreased demand for luxury goods during the Depression of the 1930s seriously damaged the cigar industry, sending Ybor City into economic and social decline. After World War II soldiers returned to witness further decline. Many of the original homes built by Ybor were still in use, but the old wooden structures were showing their age. Superior post-war housing available in other areas led to an exodus of young couples wanting to start families.

In addition, the cigar business had changed, with reduced production and some factories closed. Those still in operation were reluctant to welcome the veterans back to their former positions. By the 1950s, the few remaining cigar factories were almost completely mechanized.

For several decades, Ybor City was virtually a ghost town, a collection of vacant brick factories, empty stores, and deserted sidewalks. During the Federal Urban Renewal projects of the 1960s, entire blocks of old buildings were razed, but the replacement construction never took place. Another blow was the construction of Interstate 4, which cut a swath through the area, cutting it in half and wiping out many homes and other older structures. Only a few businesses and residents remained, most notably the Columbia Restaurant and a few other businesses on 7th Avenue.

Rebirth

Ybor street festival, c.2006. The large building was once Centro Español Club, now a part of Centro Ybor

Starting in the late 1980s, an influx of artists seeking interesting and inexpensive studio quarters started a slow recovery, followed by a period of commercial gentrification. By the early 1990s, many of the old long-empty brick buildings on 7th Avenue were converted into bars, restaurants, nightclubs, and other nightlife attractions.[51] 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. New residents had come to Ybor for the first time in many years.

In mid 2007, Ybor City saw a new group of interested people come to their area. Gays and lesbians with an interest of building a neighborhood of businesses on the west end of Ybor City at 7th Avenue and 15th Street. City leaders were welcoming to this and a new district coalition was created in September 2007 called the GaYbor District Coalition and became known as the GaYbor District in Historic Ybor City. Several businesses were quick to jump on board the coalition, including the Hampton Inn. Presently over 100 local businesses are in the coalition consisting of hotels, various bars and nightclubs, restaurants, and organizations. Within the 7th Ave and 15th St area, many of the once empty and/or dormant buildings are now filled and accommodating gay and lesbian clientele.

Museums

  • Cigar Museum And Visitor Center, Ybor City
  • Ybor City Museum State Park
  • TECO Line Streetcar Museum

Annual events

  • Sant'Yago Knight Parade (a.k.a. Gasparilla Night Parade) - usually held the Saturday following the Gasparilla Pirate Festival in late February
  • GaYbor Daze - various daytime events and evening parties geared toward the LGBT community during 4th of July weekend
  • Guavaween - various daytime events and nighttime parade in October, named for Tampa's "Big Guava" nickname
  • Rough Rider's St. Patrick's Night Parade - illuminated nighttime parade held on or near St. Patrick's Day, mid-March
  • Tampa Cigar Heritage Festival - celebrated mid-November
  • Festa Italiana - weekend event celebrating Italian culture and food, celebrated mid-April
  • Fiesta - weekend event celebrating Latin culture and food, celebrated mid-February

Public transit

The TECO Line Streetcar System, which links Ybor City, the Channelside District and downtown Tampa, began operating on Saturday, 19 October 2002. The Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority (HARTline) operates the streetcars as well as the bus system.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Muniz 1954, p..
  2. ^ Lastra 2006, p..
  3. ^ Westfall 2000, p..
  4. ^ Lastra 2006, p..
  5. ^ Muniz 1954, p..
  6. ^ Westfall 2000, p..
  7. ^ Benefactor in bronze, The Tampa Tribune, July 23, 2000.
  8. ^ Westfall 2000, p..
  9. ^ Muniz 1954, p..
  10. ^ Westfall 2000, p..
  11. ^ Lastra 2006, p..
  12. ^ Muniz 1954, p..
  13. ^ Mormino 1998, p..
  14. ^ Lastra 2006, p..
  15. ^ Lastra 2006, p..
  16. ^ Muniz 1954, p..
  17. ^ Mormino 1998, p..
  18. ^ Muniz 1954, p..
  19. ^ Lastra 2006, p..
  20. ^ Lastra 2006, p..
  21. ^ Lastra 2006, p.14
  22. ^ Leto, p..
  23. ^ Mormino 1998, p..
  24. ^ Leto, p..
  25. ^ Lastra 2006, p..
  26. ^ Muniz 1954, p..
  27. ^ Westfall 2000, p..
  28. ^ Westfall 2000, p..
  29. ^ Muniz 1954, p..
  30. ^ Lastra 2006, p..
  31. ^ Westfall 2000, p..
  32. ^ Muniz 1954, p..
  33. ^ Mormino 1998, p..
  34. ^ Westfall 2000, p..
  35. ^ Muniz 1954, p..
  36. ^ Muniz 1954, p..
  37. ^ Westfall 2000, p..
  38. ^ Lastra 2006, p..
  39. ^ Lastra 2006, p..
  40. ^ Westfall 2000, p..
  41. ^ Lastra 2006, p..
  42. ^ Westfall 2000, p..
  43. ^ Mormino 1998, p..
  44. ^ Lastra 2006, p..
  45. ^ Lastra 2006, p.20
  46. ^ Muniz 1954, p.20
  47. ^ Muniz 1954, p.15
  48. ^ Westfall, p.46
  49. ^ Leto, p.3
  50. ^ Leto, p.3
  51. ^ Seizing The Day, The Tampa Tribune, March 27, 2005.

References

  • Ingalls, Robert (2003). Tampa Cigar Workers: A Pictorial History. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. ISBN 0813026024.
  • Lastra, Frank (2006). Ybor City: The Making of a Landmark Town. University of Tampa Press. ISBN 159732003X.
  • Mormino, Gary (1998). The Immigrant World of Ybor City. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. ISBN 0813016304.
  • Muniz, Jose Rivero (translated 1976). The Ybor City Story: 1885-1954. translated by E. Fernandez and H. Beltran. private printing. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |origdate= ignored (|orig-date= suggested) (help)
  • Westfall, Loy G. (2000). Tampa Bay: Cradle of Cuban Liberty. Key West Cigar City USA. ISBN 966894820. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: length (help)
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