J.C. Newman Cigar Co.

J.C. Newman Cigar Co. runs its retail store out of El Reloj, the clock-towered brick factory it has occupied in Ybor City since 1954. The company itself dates back to 1895, when Julius Caesar Newman started rolling cigars in Cleveland, Ohio with fifty borrowed dollars. His descendants moved the business south, and today it is run by fourth and fifth generation family members, Eric and Bobby Newman along with Eric’s son Drew, making J.C. Newman the only one of the original 40,000 American cigar manufacturers still owned and operated by its founding family.

El Reloj is also the last operating cigar factory left in a district that once had dozens. The building dates to 1910 and takes its nickname from the working clock tower on its facade, a landmark visible from several blocks away in Ybor City’s historic core. Inside, the retail store sits at the front of the building, stocked with the company’s full lineup, including the Diamond Crown, Brand, and Perla del Mar lines, along with cigars rolled using century-old equipment still in use on the factory floor.

What makes a visit here different from a typical cigar shop stop is the access to the factory itself. J.C. Newman opens El Reloj to the public on weekdays, with tours through the museum, the theater, and the working factory floor offered free of charge. Visitors who arrive before 3pm can watch cigar rollers hand-roll cigars using techniques that have not changed much since the early 1900s, a rare thing to see up close anywhere in the country, let alone for free.

The museum portion traces the company’s path from that first Cleveland cigar table through the family’s move to Tampa and the eventual 1986 buyout that kept the business in Newman hands. Old factory equipment, vintage packaging, and photographs fill the space alongside the working rolling floor, giving the visit some real historical weight rather than feeling like a staged attraction built for tourists. The gift shop portion sells not just cigars but branded merchandise and packaged goods tied to the company’s history.

El Reloj is open Monday through Friday from 9am to 5pm and closed on weekends, which lines up with the working factory schedule rather than typical retail hours. For anyone spending an afternoon in Ybor City, it is one of the few places left where the neighborhood’s cigar-making history is not just commemorated but still actively happening on the other side of the counter, run day to day by the same family that started it more than a century ago.