Three stories of brick fill 1911 North 13th Street, the Ybor Factory Building. This three-story structure, credited to architect C. E. Parcell, was built in 1886 by Vicente Martinez-Ybor as he moved production of his Príncipe de Gales cigar line from Key West to the new company town he founded just northeast of Tampa in 1885. The main factory and its surrounding support buildings occupy an entire city block between 8th Avenue and 9th Avenues and 13th and 14th Streets in the Ybor City Historic District of Ybor City.
Directly across 9th Avenue is the El Pasaje building, constructed at about the same time as the headquarters of Ybor's holding company. When it rose, this three-story brick building was the first brick cigar factory in Tampa and the largest cigar factory in the world at the time. For decades skilled tabaqueros rolled hundreds of millions of cigars on wooden workbenches set close together in the building's wide, sunlit rolling rooms.
After Ybor died in 1896 the factory passed through a succession of other cigar manufacturers and continued to be productive. The full block, 9th Avenue toward El Pasaje, and 13th and 14th Streets all wait for your eye to rest on them.