Ybor City

Conveniently located just northeast of downtown, Ybor City is the only neighborhood on Florida’s west coast to be designated a National Historic Landmark District. Several structures in the area are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It was founded in the 1880s by Vicente Martinez-Ybor and other cigar manufacturers and populated by thousands of immigrants, mainly from Cuba, Spain, and Italy. For the next 50 years, workers in Ybor City’s cigar factories rolled hundreds of millions of cigars annually.

Ybor City was unique in the American South as a successful town almost entirely populated and owned by immigrants. The district has enjoyed a rich and diverse culture for more than a century. The neighborhood had features unusual among contemporary communities in the south, most notably its multiethnic and multiracial population and their many mutual aid societies. The cigar industry employed thousands of well-paid workers, helping Tampa grow from an economically depressed village to a bustling city in about 20 years and giving it the nickname “Cigar City”.

Ybor’s 7th Avenue, the main commercial thoroughfare was recognized as one of the “10 Great Streets in America” by the American Planning Association. It’s not just Tampa’s playground, it’s historically different with a thriving influx of growing corporations and small businesses, eclectic retail stores, diverse restaurants and a growing number of new residential units for people calling Ybor City home.