10 Best Things to Do in Ybor City
Ybor City is one of Tampa’s most famous and one of its most colorful neighborhoods. Minutes from downtown, this charming historic district of about 300 acres got its start in the 1880s. That’s when Spanish immigrant Vincente Martinez-Ybor brought the booming cigar industry to Tampa.
Ybor was the first, the visionary. Not long after the turn of the century, about a couple hundred cigar factories were producing over a million cigars a day. Thousands of Cuban, Italian, Spanish, Eastern European and some Chinese immigrants were drawn to what became known as the “Cigar Capital of the World.”
Ybor and his industry counterparts established other area businesses like a streetcar line, grocery stores and other essential services along with constructing small houses known as “casitas.” Workers could purchase the homes at cost as a way of increasing staff retention and improving worker satisfaction.
The company town boomed for several years until the Great Depression triggered a downturn in the cigar industry. Demand for luxury products like fine cigars dropped, leading to the closure of some of the factories. As mechanized production increased, many workers lost their jobs and left the city.
The neighborhood further declined in the 1950s when I-4 was constructed through Ybor.
The eighties and nineties brought revitalization to one of Florida’s most unique cultural gems. Today, this national historic district is teeming with the Sunshine State’s biggest industry - tourism. On this episode, we show you around this Tampa neighborhood and run down what we think are the best things to do in Ybor City.
