At 1818 9th Avenue the former Ferlita Bakery, originally La Joven Francesca, now houses the Ybor City Museum State Park in the Ybor City Historic District. This building was likely the earliest U.S. bakery to produce Cuban bread, established in 1896 by the Sicilian-born Francisco Ferlita, a man of Cuban-Spanish-Italian descent. In those days a loaf sold for 3 to 5 cents, mainly to the Ybor City market.
Walk through the rooms and you'll find the brick bread oven that survived a fire in 1922; the blaze left only the brick bread oven standing, and Francisco rebuilt the bakery larger and added a second oven. Those ovens are now part of the museum displays that tell the story of the cigar industry and the Latin community from the 1880s through the 1930s. Rangers lead tours of the ornamental garden and the casitas, the small homes of cigar company workers, and exhibits, period photos and a video cover the founding of Ybor City and the cigar-making industry.
The ornamental garden is available for rental after regular hours. Notice the ovens, the garden, and the casitas that anchor this historic block.