L'Unione Italiana (The Italian Club) in Tampa, Florida

L'Unione Italiana is the Italian Club of Tampa, a mutual aid society that Italian immigrants founded in Ybor City on April 4, 1894.

Its clubhouse, a three-story Neoclassical building completed by 1918, stands at 1731 7th Avenue, across 7th Avenue from the site of the first clubhouse, which burned in 1914, according to the Florida Division of Historical Resources marker. That marker states that the society's primary purpose was to promote social and fraternal exchange among its members and to provide medical benefits and burial expenses.

The Italian Club describes itself as a society that began with 127 members and grew into one of Tampa's most important cultural institutions, and its website lists the club at 1731 E. 7th Ave., Tampa, phone (813) 248-3316. The National Park Service names L'Unione Italiana among three historic social clubs on the 7th Avenue Commercial Strip of the Ybor City Historic District, a National Historic Landmark, and the club's records are part of the USF Libraries Tampa Bay Mutual Aid Society Collections.

The Italian Club was founded in 1894 to give a young immigrant colony health care, financial help, schooling and a community that shared its language.

The state marker records that the nucleus of Tampa's Italian colony arrived from New Orleans and Sicily in 1887. The City of Tampa notes that Ybor City's cigar factories were worked mostly by Cuban cigar makers and, to a lesser degree, by Italians and Spaniards, and the Italian Club says many Italian immigrants found work in that growing cigar industry and needed access to healthcare, financial assistance and education.

It was not Ybor City's first society, and its founders borrowed from the one that was. The club's history states that L'Unione Italiana became Tampa's second mutual aid society, following the founding of El Centro Espanol in 1891, and that eight Spanish immigrants who had helped establish that organization joined the Italians in creating the new club. Bartolomeo Filogamo was elected the first president; born in Sicily, he had reached New Orleans in 1885 and Tampa in 1889.

From the start the club paid out in hard times, offering assistance to members during illness and benefits to the families of deceased members. The state marker calls L'Unione Italiana the forerunner of more than 1,400 Italian mutual aid societies founded in the United States, and describes the health benefits of Ybor City's social clubs as one of the oldest examples of cooperative medicine in the country.

L'Unione Italiana supported members through a clinic and pharmacy in life and through its own cemetery and survivor benefit at death.

According to the Italian Club, members had access to a walk-in clinic and pharmacy, and in 1920 the club purchased a neighboring three-story brick building that served as a medical clinic for its members.

A separate state marker for Il Cimitero dell'Unione Italiana, dated 2000, records that the society institutionalized the Italian funeral in Tampa when in 1896 it purchased cemetery land at 26th Street and 23rd Avenue from the prominent African-American Armwood family. The marker adds that the first Italians were buried there in 1893, that the nationally known educator Blanche Armwood (1890 to 1939) is also buried there, and that the grounds include a parcel belonging to the Societa de Mutuo Soccorso.

The marker describes the funeral itself as a public ritual. Hundreds of people walked in a cortege, often pausing in front of the deceased's house and the Italian Club, where the flags of Italy and the United States stood at half mast, and a brass band led them to the cemetery. In the early years, each club member contributed one dollar to the bereaved family; later, the club established a $300 survivor benefit. Ceramic photographs on grave markers and tombstones inscribed in Sicilian and Italian pay homage to Sicily, where the stonecutters perfected their craft.

The Italian Club taught immigrants English and civics, housed a public library branch and took part in Tampa parades and war drives.

The Italian Club reports that it offered classes in English, arithmetic and American government to help members prepare for naturalization, ran Italian-language schools for children, and provided space at no cost to the Tampa Public Library so that a branch library could serve the Ybor City community.

Public events tied the society to the rest of Tampa. In 1911 the Italian Club entered the Gasparilla parade with a carriage drawn by two white horses carrying the club's first queen, a tradition the club says continues today through the Italian Club and the Krewe of Italia. When President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed May 24, 1918, Italian Day during World War I, the club and its Ladies Auxiliary organized a parade beginning at the new clubhouse, and approximately 8,000 people marched through Ybor City and downtown Tampa. In World War II, the club reports, 265 members served and L'Unione Italiana purchased $62,600 in war bonds.

Club leadership also reached City Hall. Philip Licata, president for 17 consecutive years and leader of both building campaigns, served on the Tampa City Council before becoming president, according to the club's history, and his son-in-law Nick Nuccio later served two nonconsecutive terms as mayor of Tampa.

Two Italian clubhouses stood on Seventh Avenue because the first one, opened in 1912, burned in 1914 and the society rebuilt across the street.

The Italian Club records that the three-story building at 1724 East Seventh Avenue opened on October 11, 1912, with a three-day celebration, at a cost of approximately $60,000, when membership stood near 900. It was destroyed by fire in May 1914. The state marker places that first building on the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue and Eighteenth Street.

Construction of the replacement began in April 1917 under Licata. The club gives the completed cost in 1918 as an estimated $120,000; the state marker gives $80,000, and the two figures are not reconciled by either source. The club credits Tampa architects Leo Elliott and B.C. Bonfoey, whose other projects included Tampa City Hall and the neighboring Cuban Club, and the marker says the structure embraces the Italo-Greco tradition embodied in the ancient Greek temples found in the province of Agrigento, Sicily. A contract dated November 21, 1918, held by USF Libraries, records the agreement between L'Unione Italiana and the architects that built the club building on 7th Avenue and 18th Street.

Inside, according to the club, the Ybor City building held a theater with a balcony, a ballroom, a cantina and dance floor, a library, classrooms, meeting rooms and space for medical services, and at various times billiard rooms, a gymnasium, steam rooms, handball courts and a bowling alley. The club states that the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Italian Club grew from 127 founding members to about 1,800 by 1924 and more than 3,000 after a 1934 merger.

The Italian Club reports approximately 1,800 members by 1924, and states that in 1934 the Sicilian Club of West Tampa merged with L'Unione Italiana, bringing the combined membership to more than 3,000. The club celebrated its centennial in 1994, one hundred years after the April 1894 founding in Ybor City.

Social life kept those members close. The club's history describes family picnics at DeSoto Park, including a 1912 outing that featured a four-mile race from the county courthouse in downtown Tampa to Palmetto Beach, and excursions by trolley, train and boat to Ballast Point, Pass-a-Grille, Anna Maria Island and the Hillsborough River. On Saturday evenings two bands often played at once in the 7th Avenue clubhouse, one with traditional music in the upstairs ballroom and one with popular songs for younger members in the downstairs cantina. Paolo Longo, president in 1933, 1945 and again in 1949 and 1950, led the club during the West Tampa merger, and the club still presents an annual Paolo Longo Award to a local leader who works to preserve Italian culture and heritage in Tampa.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the L'Unione Italiana and Italian cemetery markers of the Florida Division of Historical Resources, the National Park Service Ybor City Historic District page, the City of Tampa Ybor City history page, two USF Libraries collection records and the Italian Club's own history page.