The soul of Cigar City survives in a former bakery. The Ybor City Museum State Park, housed in the 1920s Ferlita Bakery on Ninth Avenue, tells how Cuban, Spanish, Italian and Jewish immigrants built Ybor City around the cigar — and preserves the little shotgun houses, the “casitas,” where cigar workers’ families lived.
Exhibits trace Vicente Martínez Ybor’s 1885 arrival, the factory floors and lectors, the mutual-aid clubs — El Centro Español, L’Unione Italiana, the Cuban Club — that provided healthcare, theatre and belonging, and the neighborhood’s rebirth as an arts and entertainment district.
The shaded museum garden, site of the old bakery’s ovens, hosts community festivals steps from Seventh Avenue’s bustle.
Start Ybor here. The casitas still have stories to tell.
