The first clubhouse for the&nbsp;Cuban Club, which is also known as El Circulo Cubano de Tampa, was built in 1907. &nbsp;As well as being a social club, the Cuban Club also served as a philanthropic society, offering aid and medical assistance to the poorer citizens of Ybor City. &nbsp;The club grew up amongst social and political&nbsp;strife both in Cuba and among Cuban-Americans, and the members of the club mirrored the upheaval of their times&nbsp;by drafting a&nbsp;charter forbidding&nbsp;discussion of labor, politics, or religion in the club. &nbsp;In 1916, the first clubhouse was destroyed by a fire, and another was built in its place. &nbsp;The new building, finished in 1917, was given more&nbsp;modern amenities to attract the people of the neighborhood, such as a&nbsp;gymnasium, swimming pool, two-story theater, pharmacy, library, ballroom, two bowling lanes,&nbsp;and cantina. &nbsp;Boxing matches and big band concerts were hosted at the club, and famous entertainers like Glenn Miller and Celia Cruz performed there. &nbsp;In the 1960s, the club &nbsp;saw its popularity begin to disappear due to economic problems in the neighborhood caused by the closing down of the cigar factories. &nbsp;The Cuban Club had always seen its membership numbers fluctuate, usually due to social and labor unrest, but this time the club couldn't keep up and it fell into disrepair. &nbsp; In 1992, a not-for-profit organization called the Cuban Club Foundation took over the building and renovated it to its former glory. &nbsp;The building is now used for special events and performing arts venues. &nbsp;Any one of its large rooms, including the former cantina ad ballroom,&nbsp;can be rented out for parties, weddings receptions,&nbsp;or business meetings.

Crowds gather outside of the Club in this 1940s photo

This family provided photo shown to Tampa Bay Times is of the Club's first president, Eladio Paula

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The Cuban Club began in the late 19th century as a social club for Tampa's huge population of Cuban immigrants, but the building that stands today was actually built at the dawn of the 20th century.  It was once the heart of Ybor City, Tampa's thriving Cuban neighborhood, and it still serves the area, though this time as a rental facility for weddings, corporate meetings, and other events.  

The Cuban Club

This tour starts at the first commercial building in the city, which once held the office cigar manufacturer Vicente Martinez Ybor. The tour includes historic buildings and businesses, a baseball museum, several institutions built by Cuban immigrants, and historic sites related to Ybor City's early history as a cigar-manufacturing center.

El Pasaje was also the&nbsp;building that for fifty years was used as politicians announced their run for Mayor of West Tampa at parties and fundraisers held in the second floor ballroom. American Presidents such as Teddy Roosevelt and Grover Cleveland stayed here when it was a hotel, as well as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Gunsmith and inventor, Frederick Remington. Jose Marti, a Cuban Revolutionary, was said to have slept here while in exile in 1891.&nbsp;

Also known as the Cherokee Club, this 1886 building is believed to be the first commercial building constructed in Ybor City. It was originally used to house the offices of Vicente Martinez Ybor, the founder and namesake of the cigar-manufacturing town, as he planned out companies beyond the cigar business for the town. During the 20th century the building was also used as a hotel, several bars and restaurants, speakeasies, a military recruiting station, newspaper offices, and most prominently, the Cherokee Club.    

El Pasaje

The Columbia Restaurant first began serving its customers in a small, Cuban-style cafe in the Ybor City neighborhood in 1905. Its main clientele were workers, many of them Cuban immigrants, who were employed at the local cigar factory. Casimiro Hernandez Sr., the owner of the cafe, expanded the business in 1919 by buying the restaurant next door and turning it into a dining area, therefore turning his little cafe into a restaurant. When he died in 1930 his son, Casimiro Jr., inherited the business. He turned the Columbia Restaurant into the elegant building it is today by adding an elevated dance floor and making the dining area into the first air-conditioned dining room in Tampa. Casimiro Jr. had one child, a daughter named Adela, who grew up to become a concert pianist and marry a violinist named Cesar Gonzmart. In 1953, Adela inherited the restaurant from her father. She and Cesar moved back to Tampa and helped revitalize the restaurant throughout 1950s and 60's, which was a bad time economically for Ybor City due to the failing business of the cigar factory. Adela and Cesar kept the business afloat by hiring flamenco dancers to perform at the restaurant, thereby introducing Latino arts and music to Tampa restaurants. The restaurant is today owned by Adela and Cesar's two sons, Casey and Richard, making this a historic business that has stayed in the family for four generations. The restaurant encompasses over an entire city block and seats up to one thousand and seven hundred people. It also has several additional franchise restaurants, including the Columbia Cafe in the Tampa Bay History Center and the Columbia Restaurant Cafe at the Tampa International Airport. Along with the typical Cuban fare, such as caramel flan or Black bean soup, the restaurant also offers 1905 salad, made with its signature 1905 Salad Dressing, and sangria that is made right at the customer's table.

The Columbia Restaurant, the oldest continually operating restaurant in the city of Tampa, can be found in Tampa's historic Ybor City neighborhood. The beautiful old restaurant is famous for serving traditional Cuban dishes in an environment inspired by Spanish and Cuban architecture. The mosaic tiles on the walls, the brick archways, the many palm trees, and the antique-styled fountain in the center of the courtyard all evoke the look of an upscale Cuban restaurant. In addition to serving food, the restaurant also offers flamenco dance shows.

Columbia Restaurant 

Born the son of Cuban immigrants in Tampa, Al Lopez became a catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1928 played for teams in Brooklyn, Boston, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland over his nineteen season career. After he retired from playing, he became the manager of the Cincinnati Indians in 1951. Later, in 1957, he became the manager of the Chicago White Sox and managed them until his retirement from baseball. His childhood home in Tampa is now the home of the Tampa Baseball Museum. The museum has exhibits on several different aspects of Tampa's baseball history, such as the Little, Major, Factory, Inter-Social, Municipal, Cigar City, and Negro Leagues. It is run by the Ybor City Museum Society. The Ybor City Museum is right across the street too, so visitors can walk from one museum to the other.   The location for the house-museum is not the original location where Al Lopez resided. The original location was 1210 E. 12th Ave. For purposes of parking, the house was moved to its current location. Work on the museum began just a few years ago and not opening date has been announced as of yet.

Located in the historic home of Al Lopez, the first Tampa native to play in the Major Leagues, the Tampa Baseball Museum preserves the history of Florida baseball, from sandlots to the Major Leagues and from spring training to the World Series. The museum, which opened in 2021, features many exhibits about the history of Tampa's several baseball leagues, including the Minor, Major, and former Negro Leagues. It covers about one hundred twenty-five years of baseball history.

Tampa Baseball Museum

The Ybor City Museum Society and Ybor City Museum State Park invite you to experience the rich cultural heritage of Ybor City, one of only two National Historic Landmark Districts in Florida. Visit the Museum located in the 1923-era Ferlita Bakery, its lush Mediterranean-style garden and the "casita," representative of a typical cigar-worker's family home. Check often for special events, programming updates and news on the many exciting activities that the Museum and Society plan for you. Education and research tools help active learners, teachers and students learn more about the role Ybor City played in Tampa's development and its reputation as the "Cigar Capital of the World." The building that houses the museum was the second one built on location that made Cuban-influenced baked goods. This building has led to the controversy over which bakery is "the real Cuban bread" since a bakery in Miami makes the claim as well. The original building was erected in the late 1800s to early 1900s and destroyed by a fire in 1922. Soon after the building here today was constructed and the bakery business was active until 1973. Not long after it closed, the building was paid for and converted into the main part of the museum.

The Ybor City Museum State Park is an urban park and historical museum in the heart of Tampa’s Ybor City National Historic Landmark District. The park consists of a main exhibit space housed in the historic Ferlita Bakery building, as well as a lush Mediterranean-style garden and a recreated cigar worker’s house. Visitors can take a guided tour through the park with one a park ranger or volunteers, or embark on a walking tour in the district. However you decide to explore the park, you will experience an urban oasis and learn about the immigrants who settled, lived in and built the thriving community of Ybor City.

Ybor City Museum and State Park

In 1891, Spanish immigrants banded together to create social aid and cultural organizations for residents and arrivals from Spain, Cuba and other Spanish-speaking Latin nations. This particular society building was to serve as a model for others that were planned for the future in Ybor City, Tampa and other areas of Florida with similar large ethnic communities. Other such buildings to come into fruition include El Centro Asturiano and El Circulo Cubano. Besides greeting and orienting new arrivals, new arrivals were offered social, cultural, recreational, educational services and healthcare after paying membership dues. Soon after in 1904 the society built their own hospital, which would become one of the top medical facilities in Florida at the time. A clubhouse was built in 1892 and included a dance hall, theater, a canteen, soda fountains and classrooms that offered English courses. The 1891 building became too small for the growing membership and a new, larger one we see today was constructed in 1912. As Prohibition, the Great Depression, the curtailment in immigration and WW2 took place, membership declined and the need for such a society was replaced by the descendants of immigrants and newer ones choosing to associate outside their cultural communities. In 1983 the society consolidated into one and relocated to the West Tampa building. Since then it was vacant until in 2010 it was restored and used as a restaurant and a school for programs through Hillsborough County. In 1988, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places and designated a National Historic Landmark.

This large and beautiful redbrick structure is one of the few remaining buildings in Tampa still standing associated with Spanish migration (largely from Spain and Cuba) to Florida during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Known as the El Centro Español de Tampa, the building was erected in 1912 to replace the smaller one built in 1891. It served the new arrivals and Ybor City residents as a mutual aid society, a clubhouse and cultural center. In more recent years it served as a home for a restaurant and school programs. For its This was one of two such structures in Tampa; the other is El Centro Español of West Tampa.

El Centro Español de Tampa

The Hotel de la Havana was a three-story structure. The known hotel was headquarters for immigrants coming over to work in the tobacco farms as well as Cuban exiles. The building burned to the ground in Ybor City's first great fire in November of 1891. There is a marker now there to commemorate the location for the great hotel, and was erected by Las Novedades restraunt. In 2015 controversy arose over a second plaque erected on the site of the hotel dedicated to Jose Marti, the famous Cuban freedom fighter. The plaque stated that Marti had slept in the hotel when in exile in 1895. However, Marti was killed in battle in 1895, before the hotel began operations. The city and Marti Historical Trail association (Marti had traveled throughout Florida to raise funds for his fellow freedom fighters during his exile)&nbsp;are currently seeking to place a new and more accurate plaque in place of the inaccurate one.&nbsp; *Any images of the hotel should be added to this entry

This is the site where once stood the Hotel de la Havana. The famed Hotel de la Havana was located in Ybor City in the pioneer days. The Hotel de la Havana was the first hotel constructed in the Latin Quarter of the city. This famed hotel was in operation for four years (1887-1891) until a fire destroyed it. 

Hotel de la Havana (Habana)

Established in 1890 by Manuel
"Canuto" Menendez, Los Novedades was established as the Ybor City's
first Spanish restaurant when Ybor was then a tiny village. The small
restaurant quickly became a favorite locale for Cuban workers of the nearby Sanchez
y Haya Cigar Factory. However the building was destroyed by a fire the next
year, but was quickly rebuilt. In 1898 after the Spanish-American War began,
the residents of Ybor City were astonished and entertained by the Rough Riders
as they trotted through the main streets of Ybor. Menedez treated the
liberators of his home nation with meals and drinks. The residents called the
scene of the Rough Riders "The Charge of the Yellow Rice Brigade"
owing to their colorful names, personalities, uniforms and free meals of
yellow-colored rice the Riders were treated with.&nbsp; 
 
In about 1920, ownership changed hands to Manuel
Iraoloa.&nbsp;&nbsp;During the 1930s and 1940s, Los Novedades was raided by
Prohibition Agents for violating Prohibition Laws of the time, but remained
open. Around this time, another Latin-influenced restaurant, mainly of Cuban
origins, opened: La Columbia, was constructed and soon rivaled Los Novedades as
the area's prime restaurant of Cuban goods.&nbsp;While Novedades survived
Prohibition well enough, La Columbia barely survived. Los Novedades, despite
this, began to struggle as the 1940s came about and was purchased by
a&nbsp;Manuel Garcia. After this, the restaurant was moved the corner of 7th
Ave. and 15th street in 1946, when previous it was on the 1400 block of 7th Ave.
The new building to house Los Novedades would remain standing for about another
30-40 years. During this time other Los Novedades would be established in
Tampico and St. Petersburg.&nbsp; 
 
In 1953, internal strife arose as workers and
owners argued over split shifts, causing workers to walk out. Luckily the
matter was soon resolved. During the 1960s Ybor City demolished much the Latin
Quarter to renovate and modernize, with Novedades and Columbia only somewhat
affected. In 1970, Los Novedades was purchased by their competitor, La
Columbia. In 1972, Novedades was then sold to a New York based company, turning
Novedades to the Steak and Brew. Again in 1975 was the home of Novedades sold,
this time becoming the club, El Goya. The club foreclosed in 1984 and the building
saw life again a few years later as an entertainment mall, also called El Goya.
The building changed hand a few more times until in 1990 it was finally
abandoned and then torn down a few years ago. A marker sits where the famous
restaurant once stood proudly.&nbsp; 
 
In 2015 plans were in the works to erect a grand
hotel in Novedades location.&nbsp; 
&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Tampa's Oldest Restaurant, this marker sits on Los Novedades final location of it's almost century long career. This historic Cuban restaurant was an institution for Tampa's Cuban Community and prime stop for tourists, celebrities and politicians as it brought to American tastebuds Cuban cuisine. The restaurant even served Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders before they shipped to Cuba for Spanish-American War, seen as liberators for the Cuban exiles of Florida. This restaurant that was established in 1890 as a corner cafe, was torn down in the 1980s and currently the spot is vacant.  

Old Los Novedades Restaurant 

The club was originally created as a&nbsp;branch of the Centro Asturiano de Habana, the
largest Cuban-centered men’s club. It was so popular that in 1911, even before the
modern building was constructed, a club picnic attracted 6,000 people, including the families and guests of members, so that
every trolley car in Tampa had to be pressed into service to transport them. In its peak years, the club serviced thousands of
men, predominantly of Cuban ancestry, though any white male could
join: many Italian-Americans and Galician-Americans&nbsp;were part of the club.&nbsp;&nbsp;The first floor, actually a basement, as it is
based three feet below street level, contains four front-facing windows situated below a
classical stylobate.&nbsp;The stylobate in turn&nbsp;serves as the base for six columnns that ascend to
the building’s cornice. There are four windows at the front of the second floor and five on&nbsp;the third floor,
with the third-floor windows&nbsp;having an arch-shaped top. A&nbsp;sweeping,
curved staircase leads to the building’s front entrance. It was called by the press at the time of its unveiling in 1914, “The
most beautiful building in the South.” The first floor was originally the recreation
floor. It contained a gymnasium, a cantina for cards, chess, and dominoes, a
billiard room with five tables and a three-lane bowling alley. The cantina still
contains what is said to be the world’s longest marble onyx bar.&nbsp;The second floor at the time contained the club’s offices, library
and reading rooms, smoking rooms, a ladies’ parlor and the stage and auditorium
of the theater. The third floor contained the Grand Ballroom and
the theatre’s balcony. (The theatre in the 1930s served as a center for the New Deal’s Federal Theatre Project: the club became the only Spanish-language WPA theater unit in the United States.) All 14 ballroom mirrors are from the original structure
in 1914. The club's hospital at 21st Avenue was shut down in 1990, however,&nbsp;and all but one of&nbsp;its&nbsp;buildings was condemned and demolished six years later, leading to the decline of the club.&nbsp;The ballroom and theatre still play host to&nbsp;many local functions and events, and the building&nbsp;also contains a meeting room for smaller events, called the Covadonga Room, and a boardroom for business meetings. On the event of its centenary in 2014, the organization held a fundraiser to augment a grant from Hillsborough County&nbsp;to fund restoration of the building. (It also hosts an annual tea party and a yearly fashion show.) The club&nbsp;in 2014 had 200 members: a fraction of its original membership, but growing. Violeta Murgado Lombardia&nbsp;of the women's auxiliary group, Las Damas of Centro Asturiano, recalled that, in the Centro's heyday, "Parents didn’t ask you if you wanted to go to the theater, they told us we were going. We grew up with it." She added: "As a child, this was our life; there was a lot of culture."

The Centro Asturiano de Tampa, located in the historic Ybor City neighborhood of Tampa, was created in 1902 as a social and civic club for immigrants, mostly from Havana, who worked in the cigar factories of Tampa. The club built a wooden clubhouse in 1908, and when this burned down, a new masonry building was completed at the present location on North Nebraska Avenue, which was dedicated on May 15, 1914. It was designed in a style combining Neo-Classical and Beaux-Arts elements by the distinguished local architect F. Leo Elliot. 

Members paid a monthly fee for health insurance, use of the club facilities and guaranteed burial in the club cemetery. The organization also operated a sanitarium in Spain, raised funds for needy families and ran a school for English instruction. The club began to decline when its hospital, built in 1927 and located at 21st Avenue in Tampa, closed down in the early 1990s. Today, the building survives mostly to preserve the history of the club and to provide its upper floors as rental space for weddings, business meetings, etc. It was officially listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. 

Ybor City Walking Tour

The Cuban Club

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources

Additional Information