Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X Today, when people think of East Bay Street’s recently renovated Cigar Factory, a stylish brick ...

Beginning in Havana in 1865, workers in cigar factories devised a way to keep their minds active and engaged during long hours of monotonous labor: they began paying a reader, or lector, to read aloud ...

A boxy, four-story brick building on Riberia Street is one of the few remaining examples of St. Augustine’s once-thriving cigar industry. Now local hotelier Kanti Patel — who is also building the new ...

TAMPA, Fla. — Richard Gonzmart reads aloud to rollers, keeping them entertained as they make cigars in J.C. Newman’s El Reloj cigar factory. “A hand cigar maker would pay, so the story goes 1-2 ...

POLK COUNTY, Fla. — A Polk County family found century-old documents that tie them to a historic cigar factory in Bartow. Bill Melvin disocvered his great-uncle was a superintendent at Thompson Cigar ...