NiniaPimp Magazine

Adolph Katz Dry Goods (1724-1726 E. 7th Avenue)
The Katz Dry Goods store was erected about 1924 as office space for the Italian Club. The balcony on this 2-story brick edifice, unlike many other originals, is entirely of cast iron, rests on sturdier posts, and is not covered with the familiar galvanized metal roof so typical of Ybor City.

The building has a stepped parapet. The storefronts have been altered.

Juan Boamonde’s Furniture (1718-1720 E. 7th Avenue)
Built about 1910, this 3-story building is impressive because of its relative height and because it is one of the few buildings in the area to retain its original cast iron storefront elements, including posts. Tile also appears on the first floor. The upper stories are relatively unaltered.

Decorative brickwork adorns the facade and a stepped brick parapet appears at the roofline.

Wolfson Building (1621-1625 E. 7th)

The Wolfson family built this 1-story brick structure in 1922. It retains its metal awning rings and a water table. Its decorative brickwork bears the family name.

Note: The Wolfson family owned:

• Abe Wolfson Mens Wear
• Wolfson’s Trimming Store (Adam Wolfson & Son, William)

S.H. Kress and Co. (1620-1626 E. 7th)

Built in 1913, as a Kress Co. store, this 3-story blond brick building reflects the popular commercial style of its period of construction. Brick pilasters and string courses decorate the
facade. Egg-and-dart molding appears at the cornice. A stepped parapet bear the “Kress” name.  The Kress Co. store expanded into the first floor of an adjacent structure built sometime between 1903 and 1915.

Other Contributers: Burgert Brothers -- Photographer

S. H. Kress & Co. was the trading name of a chain of “five and dime” retail department stores in the United States, which operated from 1896 to 1981.

Samuel H. Kress opened his first “stationery and notions” store in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania in 1887. The chain of S. H. Kress & Co. 5-10-25 Cent Stores was established in 1896.^[1] Throughout the first half of the twentieth century Kress stores were a familiar sight on “Main Street” in hundreds of cities and towns.

In 1964 Genesco, Inc. acquired ownership of Kress. The company abandoned its center-city stores and moved to the shopping malls. Genesco began liquidating Kress and closing down the Kress stores in 1980.

Tiendas Kress, the subsidiary chain in Puerto Rico, survived the parent company and is still in business there. The Kress Foundation, a philanthropic organization promoting art, was es

The company’s exclusion of African Americans from its lunch counters made Kress a target for civil rights protests during the 1960 lunch counter sit-ins, along with Woolworth’s, Rexall and other national chains.^[5] In Nashville, Tennessee, Kress repeatedly refused to serve the protesters but eventually agreed to integrate the downtown store in exchange for ending a consumer boycott. The Greensboro, North Carolina Kress was included in the first civil rights demonstrations in the South.^[6] The Kress building in Baton Rouge was the site of that city’s first civil rights sit-in, which event helped save it from the wrecking ball 45 years later.^[7]

In the 1920s and 1930s Kress sold a house label of phonograph records under the “Romeo Records” trademark.

Formerly:
(47) – Manuel Aronovitz Store

“In the month of June 1914, I arrived in this country and at that time there were two stations, one in Ybor City and one in Union Station. And by mistake my brother waited for me in Ybor City…I had to walk eighteen blocks to get to my brother.”

- Manuel Aronovitz, early Jewish immigrant

Some of Ybor City’s earliest and most adventurous immigrant residents were Jews. Ybor City’s Jews came primarily from Germany, Russia and Rumania, and many were fleeing pogroms and anti-Semitism in their native lands. Jews were quick to respond to labor agents, posters, and handbills seeking workers for the cigar factories of Key West and Tampa. Some Jews found their way to Ybor City by word of mouth alone, like Louis Schein whose family had fled Austria because of pogroms. Escaping lung ailments caused by New York’s climate, Schein came in a roundabout way to Ybor City in the 1890s. Told “there are Jews in Ybor City,” Schein made his way there and encountered Isidore Kaunitz (proprietor of the dry goods store El Sombrero Blanco.) Kaunitz, who had known Schein’s family in Austria, helped the newer immigrant enter the small but industrious group of Jews who called Ybor City home. Schein’s story exemplifies not only the “chain migration” that characterized much European immigration, but also the resourcefulness and verve of Ybor City’s immigrant Jews.

http://www.cigarcitymagazine.com/history/item/immigration-and-ybor-city-1886-1921

Building used to be:
(Recently – Club Tantra)
(41) – Haber’s Ladies Wear (Bob Rippa’s Grandfather)

The Amiptheatre