Cigar Bungalows: Cute and Historic

Since the 19th century, Key West has constituted one on the historic centers of cigar tradition. Formerly featuring more cigar factories for each person than anyplace else in the world, Key West had always played a major role in the cigar industry. Just after the War between the States, this city became a Mecca for Cuban citizens fleeing their nation's long running revolution against Spain. By the late 1870's there were over 100 factories constructing cigars.

Cuban influence in Key West first commenced on a monumental scale in 1868 when the first war against Spanish authority created a mass exodus. When Cubans confronted forced conscription into the Spanish army to battle against their countrymen, thousands of skilled cigar craftsmen and their families fled their native land.

On a single September day in 1869, over 2,000 Cubans lined the wharves of the Cuban capital to flee their mother country. While some left for New York City or New Orleans, the bulk boarded steamers for the 12-hour trip to a destination ninety miles to the north, a city Cubans called Cayo Hueso, today’s Key West.

The civil war against Spain failed by 1878, all the same it created a social Sturm und Drang in Key West as Cuban emigrants kept on arriving intermittently for decades, literally revolutionizing Key West’s social framework and economy.

Prior to 1868, Key West had fewer than 500 residents, notable chiefly for acquiring riches from shipwrecks, but a fresh form of riches was about to arrive when Cuban émigrés, with gifted cigar making skills, came by the thousands in the matter of a twelvemonth or two.

At the heyday of the industry, Key West was the largest cigar-producing city in the country. It boasted 57 major producers of cigars--many of whom relocated from Havana--and each engaged between five and 500 workers. In 1883 alone, 42 million hand-rolled cigars were constructed.

To house their cigar laborers, factory owners frequently constructed little cottages--bungalow-style structures principally of frame construction--and rented them out for low sums. To assure an ample supply of laborers, these homes were adjacent to manufacturing plants. These structures still comprise the biggest category of frame vernacular (simple structures, made of wood with few or no ornamental details) in Key West proper.

They were built from termite-proof Dade County pine with high ceilings for ventilation. They were elevated off the ground, allowing air to flow under the houses where roosters and hens lived and were part of the family, raised for eggs or meat or were trained for cock fights.

While humble by today's measures, these homes were far superior to those in Havana, certainly far superior to the wretched tenement houses in cities in the north. Many times a cigar craftsman would exchange jobs with another factory merely to have a newer house to live in. These abodes were offered for cheap rent or with the option to purchase at a fair price to preserve a stable work force.

With good homes, high wages and the freedom to support the revolution, the cigar artisans lived well. Their smart unions secured significant strength, and while many labor union workers in the North were cowered in deplorable tenement lodgings, Key West cigarworkers were basking in paradise. Even their multiple strikes, which eventually helped bring about the decline of the cigar industry, reflected the luxuriousness of their situation. In the strike of 1918, work stopped, as was common, until the union demands were filled. The requests: no brooming before 6 a.m., ice in the drinking water, and coal, not wood, as fuel for wintertime heating.

The little cigar bungalows have endured the test of time. Many of these Key West structures are diminutive, only 300 or 400 square feet. They frequently have porches, minuscule yards with picket fences and little or no grass to mow. The bungalows were made from Dade County pine by ship's carpenters, who constructed with a tongue-and-groove technique which lasts.

Property values are high, crime is low and the climate is about perfect. The bungalows are adequate for one or two friendly persons to live in--when you can be outside 350 days of the year. Key West has become such a desirable paradise for artists, the affluent and retirees that these pastoral cottages now cost at least $125,000--if you can get hold of one.

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