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Home > Daily Cigar News > Time After Time Time After Time Posted: Monday, December 30, 2002 By Michael Moretti Fifty years in disrepair, El Reloj, the clock tower rising from the roof of the J.C. Newman Cigar factory in Ybor, Florida, is alive again. Built in 1910, El Reloj, a nickname which simply means "the clock," is much more to this small community and has become a symbol to the cigar family that got it started again. The clock sits atop the red brick tower of the J.C. Newman-owned Cuesta Rey factory in the heart of the city of Ybor, once the heart of a vibrant cigar-producing country. During a ceremony in late October, the clock's 1500-pound bell was heard again for the first time in nearly 50 years. "Neighborhood people came out with tears in their eyes at the sound of their clock," said Eric Newman, president of J.C. Newman Cigars, who was present with his family at the ceremony. "It meant so much to the local residents." In 1910, when the clock was constructed, it was uncommon for the people of the community to own watches. El Reloj was a communal timepiece by which they woke, slept and ate. The image and sound of the clock pervaded daily life almost as much as the cigar business itself. Ybor was once home to a booming cigar business producing approximately one million hand-rolled cigars a day, according to an retrospective article in the Tampa Tribune. Today, the J.C. Newman factory is the last in the city. The hand rollers are a thing of the past in Ybor, but the factory still makes Rigoletto, Mexican Segundos, Decision, Tobacco Place and some private-label cigars by machine. The Newman family bought the factory in 1953 when it transferred its business from Cleveland, Ohio, to Florida from the original owner, E. Regensburg & Sons, which at the time were the makers of the popular cigar brand called Admiration. According to Eric Newman, company chairman (and Eric's father) Stanford Newman had a request from a neighborhood woman when he first came to Ybor -- she asked him to stop the clock from chiming because it woke her baby. New in the city, Stanford wanted to please, so he promptly shut down the bell in 1953. Despite much protest from the community, the Newmans kept the bell off, and in the 1960s it was damaged by several tropical storms. Eric says his father, who is now 86, had a desire to see the tower work again in his lifetime. The family went ahead and invested in a three-year-long restoration of the original parts, using the labor of specialized tradesmen and craftsmen. The original parts of El Reloj -- the face, which is eight feet in diameter, an eight-foot pendulum, the 1,500-pound bell, a 12-foot cable, and the original weight and pulley time piece churning 100 feet below the clock -- are testament to the endurance of the cigar industry. Also in Cigar News:
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Cigar Aficionado Online
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