Ybor City: How a Tampa Neighborhood Became the Cigar Capital of the World
Long before anyone called anywhere the "cigar capital of the world," a Spanish businessman named Vicente Martinez-Ybor moved his cigar operations to a patch of scrubland east of Tampa in 1885. Within a generation, that patch - Ybor City - was rolling hundreds of millions of hand-made cigars a year and had drawn thousands of Cuban, Spanish, Sicilian and German families into one of the most remarkable immigrant neighborhoods in American history.
The golden age
At its peak in the early 1900s, Ybor's brick factories employed some ten thousand rollers. Lectores - hired readers - sat on platforms above the factory floors reading newspapers and novels aloud while the torcedores worked. Social clubs, mutual aid societies and cafés lined the streets; 7th Avenue (La Séptima) was the neighborhood's beating heart. Tampa wasn't just a cigar town - it out-produced Havana itself.
Decline and rebirth
Machine-made cigarettes, the Depression and mechanization emptied the factories by mid-century. But the neighborhood never lost the leaf: the brick buildings, the social clubs, and a stubborn community of cigar people kept the tradition alive. Today Ybor City is a National Historic Landmark District, and 7th Avenue is once again the best cigar street in America - hand rollers in shop windows, lounges in century-old storefronts, and the smell of cedar everywhere.
Where we fit in
King Corona has held court right on the strip since 1998 - our landmark cigar bar at 1523 E 7th Ave, and opening this November, King Corona 1902: a 12,000 square foot lounge at 1902 E 7th Ave with a members-only floor and a balcony over the avenue. Walk-in humidors stocked with Arturo Fuente and Rocky Patel, a full bar, and the kind of conversation that has been happening on this street for 140 years. We've carried the tradition west, too, with lounges in Fullerton and Escondido, California.
Visiting Ybor?
Come early, walk La Séptima end to end, and give yourself at least an hour in a chair with something from the humidor - this is not a neighborhood to rush. Can't make the trip? Our entire humidor ships, and it all comes from the same place the cigar capital's reputation did.
Shop the humidor
100+ premium cigars - Arturo Fuente, Rocky Patel and our exclusive Dulzura Farms - shipped fresh from our humidor.
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