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La Unión Martí-Maceo

African-American history of FloridaBuildings and structures in Hillsborough County, Florida
Tampa Ybor City Marti Maceo plaque01
Tampa Ybor City Marti Maceo plaque01

La Unión Martí-Maceo (also known as the Martí-Maceo Society) is a historic social club in Ybor City, Florida established by Afro-Cubans. It was founded in 1900. It is a site on the Florida Black Heritage Trail. It is at 1226 East 7th Avenue. The ornate clubhouse was demolished during an urban renewal redevelopment program in the 1960s, and its headquarters was proposed for sale to address financial difficulties in 2018. The scholar Susun D. Greenbaum described the club as "the focal institution around which, and inside of which, the Afro-Cuban identity emerged in Tampa."

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article La Unión Martí-Maceo (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

La Unión Martí-Maceo
East 7th Avenue, Tampa Ybor City

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 27.960416666667 ° E -82.445972222222 °
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Address

East 7th Avenue 1260
33605 Tampa, Ybor City
Florida, United States
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Tampa Ybor City Marti Maceo plaque01
Tampa Ybor City Marti Maceo plaque01
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Ybor City
Ybor City

Ybor City ( EE-bor) is a historic neighborhood just northeast of downtown Tampa, Florida, United States. It was founded in the 1880s by Vicente Martinez-Ybor and other cigar manufacturers and populated by thousands of immigrants, mainly from Cuba, Spain, and Italy. For the next 50 years, workers in Ybor City's cigar factories rolled hundreds of millions of cigars annually. Ybor City was unique in the American South as a successful town almost entirely populated and owned by immigrants. The neighborhood had features unusual among contemporary communities in the south, most notably its multiethnic and multiracial population and their many mutual aid societies. The cigar industry employed thousands of well-paid workers, helping Tampa grow from an economically depressed village to a bustling city in about 20 years and giving it the nickname "Cigar City".Ybor City grew and flourished from the 1890s until the Great Depression of the 1930s, when a drop in demand for fine cigars reduced the number of cigar factories and mechanization in the cigar industry greatly reduced employment opportunities in the neighborhood. This process accelerated after World War II, and a steady exodus of residents and businesses continued until large areas of the formerly vibrant neighborhood were virtually abandoned by the late 1970s. Attempts at redevelopment failed until the 1980s, when an influx of artists began a slow process of gentrification. In the 1990s and early 2000s, a portion of the original neighborhood around 7th Avenue developed into a nightclub and entertainment district, and many old buildings were renovated for new uses. Since then, the area's economy has diversified with more offices and residences, and the population has shown notable growth for the first time in over half a century. Ybor City has been designated as a National Historic Landmark District, and several structures in the area are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In 2008, 7th Avenue, Ybor City's main commercial thoroughfare, was recognized as one of the "10 Great Streets in America" by the American Planning Association. In 2010 Columbia Restaurant, which is Florida's oldest restaurant, was named a "Top 50 All-American icon" by Nation's Restaurant News magazine.