SOLLA-CARCABA CIGAR FACTORY

The Solla-Carcaba Cigar Factory, completed in 1909, is the last remnant in St. Augustine of the cigar industry, whose local origins date to the 1830s. Political unrest drove many Cuban cigarmakers to Florida after 1868. Their numbers in St. Augustine were enough by 1892 to attract a visit by revolutionary leader José Martí. One Cuban, P.F. Carcaba, born in Oviedo, Spain, brought his cigar-making business from Cincinnati to St. Augustine in 1893, selling pure Havana “Caballeros” in boxes featuring images of Henry Flagler’s great hotels. After Carcaba’s death in 1906, his son, W.H. Carcaba, partnered with his brother-in-law, Agustín Solla, to construct this building. Local architect Fred A. Henderich, a specialist in revival and Bungalow styles, melded Italianate and Mediterranean Revival elements in his design for the building. The Carcaba Company failed in 1917, its assets purchased by the Pamies-Arango Cigar Company, which itself collapsed in 1926 along with the Florida economy. The building then housed a number of businesses before its restoration in 1985. The oldest surviving major industrial building in the city, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.