Ybor City

Ybor City is a historic neighborhood in Tampa, Florida located just northeast of downtown. It was founded in the 1880s by cigar manufacturers and was populated by thousands of immigrants, mainly from Spain, Cuba, and Italy. For the next 50 years, workers in Ybor City's cigar factories would roll millions of cigars annually.

The neighborhood had features unusual among contemporary immigrant communities in the southern United States, most notably its multi-ethnic and multi-racial population and their many mutual aid societies.[1] A slow exodus out of the area that began during the Great Depression accelerated after World War II, leading to a period of abandonment and decay. After decades of neglect, a portion of the original neighborhood has redeveloped into a night club and entertainment district. One of the five campuses of Hillsborough Community College is located there - HCC Ybor.

For the most part, Ybor City still uses the gridded street system laid out by Gavino Guiterrez in 1885. Many roadways are now paved with modern materials, though a few brick streets remain. Work on an elevated connector between I-4 and the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway to siphon truck traffic away from the area began in January 2010. The project is scheduled to be complete in 2014.