Ybor Factory Building, Tampa

The Ybor Factory Building in Tampa is a significant historical landmark. It covers an entire city block between the 8th and 9th Avenues and 13th and 14th Streets in the Ybor City district. The architect credited with designing the building was C. E. Parcell. Vicente Martinez-Ybor built the factory in 1886 after moving his Príncipe de Gales cigar line from Key West to a new company town he founded northeast of Tampa in 1885. The headquarters of Ybor's holding company was constructed around the same time, directly across 9th Avenue in the El Pasaje building.

At the time of its construction, the three-story structure was the world's largest cigar factory and Tampa's first brick cigar factory. Skilled cigar makers or tabaqueros produced hundreds of millions of cigars on wooden workbenches located in the building's sunlit rolling rooms over the following decades.

After Ybor died in 1896, the factory changed ownership and remained productive until after World War II, when the cigar industry and Ybor City experienced a decline. The buildings sat vacant for several decades before being used as gallery and studio spaces for artists and then transformed into a festival marketplace called Ybor Square in the mid-1970s. On November 15, 1972, the Ybor Factory Building was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

In 2002, the buildings transformed, and became office spaces, except for the former tobacco storage warehouse, which housed a Spaghetti Warehouse franchise until 2016. In 2010, the Church of Scientology purchased the building to consolidate its existing facilities in Ybor City and West Tampa.