Before V.M. Ybor and Ybor Heights became separate neighborhoods, they were unified as La Paloma. A neighbor (shoutout Myra Pierce) proposed that La Paloma came from a song. The Spanish song “La Paloma” became globally popular as Tampa began to boom at the turn of the 20th century. She supposed the song inspired the La Paloma subdivision and the subdivision inspired the name for the neighborhood. I think she was right. The exotic flair of “La Paloma” fascinated me, so I searched for evidence of this little known neighborhood.
Head Start Suggests Promise
The first connection was the La Paloma Head Start, located at Nebraska and 28th Avenue. Once I became aware of La Paloma the neighborhood, the Head Start’s reference to its environs seemed to substantiate La Paloma’s history. I began to look for other references to the neighborhood wherever I could.
1905 Appearance is Likely Earliest
The La Paloma subdivision, filed in 1905, is very likely the first instance of the name in or around today’s V.M. Ybor and Ybor Heights. The subdivision’s boundaries encompass 21st Avenue, 10th Street, 24th Avenue, and 12th Street. This site in the rural and sparsely populated hinterland beyond the City limits had no real ties to Ybor at the time, but is widely considered a part of Ybor City today. The 1905 La Paloma subdivision seemed to anchor the name to the neighborhood‘s early beginnings. Encouraged, I continued to search for mention in the record.
Neighborhood Existence Dubious
I eventually stumbled onto the La Paloma Bakery, which opened in 1924 opposite the Centro Asturiano. The Spanish bakery provided bread for nearby restaurants and local customers. Its location south of I-4 but in close proximity to the La Paloma boundary tempted consideration of a pre-interstate history. However, I could find no reference to a contemporary or older La Paloma neighborhood to support that scenario.
Ybor Saloon Name a Coincidence
As I continued to search, I happened upon the La Paloma Saloon, which operated at 13th Avenue and 18th Street in Ybor City around the same time as the subdivision filing. The ostensibly seedy La Paloma Saloon sat on the north side of the street from where the U-Haul cigar factory building stands today. It predated the subdivision and had no apparent ties to it. The La Paloma name seemed coincidental, and it was a bit too far away to make sense.
La Paloma Neighborhood a Recent Invention
The earliest record I found of the La Paloma neighborhood comes from a 1996 public inquiry as to the origin of the name. In 1997, widely beloved community advocate Betty P. Wiggins signed a letter to the police as coordinator of the La Paloma Neighborhood Crime Watch. She detailed an uptick in street crime concentrated in the heart of the La Paloma subdivision. Carrol Joseph Marshall, who likely became coordinator when City Council appointed Betty to fill an empty seat, lived at 10th Street and 25th Avenue in the La Paloma subdivision.
La Paloma Grows
The interstate literally redefined Tampa’s neighborhoods. Ybor City north of I-4 gradually began to form its own identity. Here’s my hunch. La Paloma started with the La Paloma subdivision watch group in the mid-1990’s. Shortly thereafter, a watch group further north formed and adopted the La Paloma name. These two watch groups stretched La Paloma from I-4 to MLK, but the name was short-lived. The divergence into V.M. Ybor and Ybor Heights realigned the neighborhoods’ names with their roots while recognizing their own trajectories.
Ybor More Salient – La Paloma Dies
The exact sequence of events remains a mystery, but one thing is certain. La Paloma does not appear to have been used much. I’ve only seen it between 1996 – 2000, and even then there’s essentially no reference to the neighborhood in the record until people started discussing a name change. Evidence suggests most of the people who lived in the neighborhood called it Ybor City, not La Paloma. Wherever it came from, La Paloma is gone; the Head Start its only artifact in a growing and changing city.
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