Tampa Tampa Box Company 7th Avenue and 17th Street in Ybor City The Tampa Box Company was founded in the mid-1890s to manufacture Cuban cedar cigar boxes for the rapidly expanding cigar industry in Ybor City . Located at the corner of 7th Avenue and 16th Street, the factory occupied the entire block between 16th and 17th Streets in the center of Tampa’s cigar manufacturing district. The company was highly mechanized for its time. With approximately eighty-five employees, the factory could produce nearly 6,000 cigar boxes daily, helping supply the enormous demand generated by Tampa’s cigar factories around the turn of the twentieth century. Around 1900, businessman Henry Leiman purchased the company, and in 1906 the business incorporated and relocated to a larger tract on 22nd Street. That later industrial building survives today as the Box Factory Lofts . After the company moved, the original property was redeveloped. Construction of the Gutierrez Building began in 1907, and ...
