Vicente Martinez Ybor

Vicente Martinez-Ybor (7 September 1818 - 14 December 1896), a Spanish immigrant to the United States, became a noted industrialist and cigar manufacturer first in Cuba, then Key West, and finally Tampa, Florida.

Martinez-Ybor is best known for his founding the immigrant-populated cigar manufacturing town of Ybor City just outside Tampa, Florida in 1885. It was annexed by Tampa in 1887 and was a major factor in the community's rapid development from a small town into one of the largest cities in Florida and, for a time, the world's leader in cigar manufacturing. In addition to his Principe de Gales line of Cuban cigars, he founded many other businesses in Tampa including an insurance company, street paving, gas stations, a streetcar line, and a Tampa's first brewery. For his workers, he built and sold hundreds of affordable homes, brought doctors to the area, and converted his original cigar factory into a social hall and theater for Tampa's first mutual aide society, El Centro Español de Tampa. His business interests were integral to the rapid expansion of the Port of Tampa and Tampa's overall economy.^[1]

When Martinez-Ybor died in 1896, much of Tampa closed down to attend his funeral. His has been honored with a statue in Ybor City and a bust on the Tampa Riverwalk.^[1]

Early life

Martinez Ybor was born in Valencia, Spain in 1818.

Cuba

In 1832, at the age of fourteen, he moved to Cuba to avoid the military service then mandatory for all male Spaniards,^[2] and took a job as a grocery clerk before learning the cigar business.^[3] In 1848, Martinez Ybor married Palmia Learas, and they had four children before her death.^[2]

In 1856 Martinez Ybor founded his own company in Havana, Cuba and began manufacturing his El Principe de Gales ("Prince of Wales") brand.^[4] The brand quickly became popular, and Martinez Ybor's factory was soon producing 20,000 cigars a day.^[3] In his personal life, Martinez Ybor remarried in 1862. He and his wife Mercedes de las Revillas would have eight additional children.^[2]

Statue of V. Martinez-Ybor in Centro Ybor shopping complex

Florida

Key West

In 1868, the Ten Years' War broke out as Cubans fought to win their independence from Spanish colonial rule. Martinez-Ybor sympathized with the Cuban cause and was (correctly) accused by Spanish authorities of quietly providing funds and assistance to Cuban rebels. In 1869, he received word that he faced eminent arrest, so he and his family hurriedly fled to Key West, Florida.^[4]

Martinez-Ybor opened a new factory in Key West and resumed manufacturing his Principe de Gales brand, employing many Cubans who had also left their homeland due to the war. Though his business prospered, conflict between Spanish and Cuban workers, labor unrest, and the difficulty of transportation to and from the island city eventually led Ybor to search for another site.^[4]

Ybor City

Martinez-Ybor explored several possible relocation sites for his cigar business, and Galveston, Texas was the leading candidate until his friend and city engineer Gavino Gutierrez recommended the small town of Tampa, Florida. Tampa was an optimal choice due to the low price of land and the transportation links provided by Henry Plant's new railroad links and steamship line, which regularly ran between Tampa and Cuba. Difficult negotiations over a particular parcel of land almost scuttled the deal, but a $5000 subsidy from Tampa's Board of Trade enticed Martinez-Ybor to purchase 40 acres (160,000 m²) of scrubland northeast of Tampa in October 1885. By the following spring, Martinez Ybor, along with business partner Eduardo Manrara and friendly rival cigar manufacturer Ignacio Haya, had bought several adjoining parcels, and Gavino Gutierrez was hired to plan and lay out a company town that was to be dubbed Ybor City. Martinez-Ybor's operations were temporarily based in a wooden factory until late 1886, when his permanent factory opened. The factory is an imposing brick complex that fills an entire city block and was the largest cigar manufacturing facility in the world when it was completed.^[4]

Ybor's cigar factory, c. 1902

The community grew slowly until late 1886, when a large fire in Key West destroyed much of the town and brought hundreds of cigar workers to Tampa seeking employment. This influx began a period of steady growth that would continue for decades. Martinez-Ybor sought to avoid the constant labor unrest he had struggled with in Key West by providing what he considered good wages and living conditions. His company built small houses that his workers could purchase for cost, hoping that home ownership would keep his employees from migrating back and forth to Cuba, as was common practice among cigar workers in those days. Martinez Ybor encouraged other cigar factories to move in to increase the pool of workers, and welcomed entrepreneurs who founded businesses in the area. He also founded a variety of other businesses catering to the growing community, including a brewery, a hotel, an ice factory, a gas company, a brick factory, an insurance company, and Tampa's first streetcar line, among other ventures.^[5]

Martinez Ybor's plan worked. After a slow start, both his business and Ybor City as a whole flourished, with the area's cigar factories hand-rolling and shipping tens of millions of cigars annually by the late 1880s, the number increasing into the hundreds of millions by the turn of the 20th century. The initially independent town was annexed by the city of Tampa in 1887 and continued to grow and prosper for several decades.^[4]

Vicente Martinez-Ybor's grave site in the St. Louis section of Tampa's Oaklawn Cemetery

Death and legacy

Martinez Ybor's role in initiating Tampa's phenomenal growth in population and wealth in the late 1890s was widely acknowledged and appreciated during his lifetime. After he died in Tampa on December 14, 1896, the headline of the Tampa Tribune read "Great Benefactor Gone" and many of the businesses in town closed in his honor during his funeral.^[1][2] He owned so many business ventures and real estate in the area that his partners concluded that there was not enough available capital in Tampa to turn his assets into money. His family eventually did sell off his holdings, but it took almost 10 years to do so.^[5]

Vicente Martinez Ybor is buried in the St. Louis Catholic Cemetery section of Oaklawn Cemetery in downtown Tampa. In honor of his contributions to the area's development, there are streets, schools, and likenesses of him around the city, including a bronze statue in front of the Centro Ybor shopping area located in Ybor City's traditional commercial district along 7th Avenue and a bust along the Tampa Riverwalk.^[6]

See also

History of Tampa, Florida

References

• Muniz, Jose Rivero (1954). The Ybor City Story: 1885-1954. translated by E. Fernandez and H. Beltran (1976). private printing. 
• Lastra, Frank (2006). Ybor City: The Making of a Landmark Town. University of Tampa Press. ISBN 1-59732-003-X. 

External links

• Historical markers relating to V.M. Ybor in Ybor City
• Cameron B. LeBlanc, "Preserving the Memory of Ybor City, Florida", Southern Spaces, 22 December 2009.