L'Unione Italiana, the Italian Club, occupies 1731 East Seventh Avenue in Ybor City. Designed by Tampa architect M. Leo Elliott, this is the hall of a mutual-aid society founded in 1894 to serve Italian immigrants. The club began with 107 members and grew to over 3,000 by 1935; its first president was Bartolomeo Filogamo.
The original 1911 building burned down in 1914, and an entirely new building was completed here in 1918 — the one you see today. For members, the club meant practical protections: health insurance, sick and death benefits. It also anchored cultural life.
The society owned a cemetery and maintained Sicilian burial customs, importing cypress trees and marking graves with headstones that often bore photos and Italian and Sicilian scripts. Inside these walls, men played games, drank, read, and gathered to watch live performances. In the 1930s and 1940s the club even housed a movie theater called the Broadway, bringing films into the neighborhood.
The façade and the stretch of East Seventh Avenue wait quietly for you to notice.