Parque Amigos de José Martí in Tampa, Florida

Parque Amigos de José Martí, listed by the City of Tampa as Jose Marti Park, is a small Ybor City park on the site of the Pedroso boardinghouse where José Martí stayed, and the city describes it as Cuban territory since 1956.

The City of Tampa's 2025 Park Finder Challenge includes Jose Marti Park among its featured Tampa parks, with Ybor as its neighborhood, and describes it as Cuban territory since 1956 that pays homage to Cuban national hero Jose Marti. The state's Florida historical marker for Sociedad La Union Marti-Maceo, erected in 1998, places Pedroso's boardinghouse at 13th Street and 8th Avenue and identifies that corner as the present site of Marti Park.

The park sits inside the Ybor City Historic District, which the National Park Service describes as a National Historic Landmark northeast of downtown Tampa containing more than 950 historic buildings and structures from its peak industrial years. The City of Tampa's SoulWalk Ybor City map and landmarks guide lists a historic marker named La Casa De Pedroso on 8th Avenue between 13th and 14th Street.

State, county and city records agree that the Pedroso home stood where Marti Park is today, but they differ on details such as Paulina Pedroso's life dates.

The life dates conflict. Hillsborough County's page gives Paulina Pedroso's years as 1826 to 1930, while the Florida Women's Hall of Fame says she returned to Cuba during a 1910 tobacco factory strike and died there 15 years later, which would place her death about 1925. This page reports both rather than choosing one.

Paulina and Ruperto Pedroso were Afro-Cuban cigar workers and independence organizers whose Ybor City boardinghouse served as a base for José Martí in Tampa.

Hillsborough County's Four Women Who Made Local History says Pedroso and her husband, Ruperto, managed a boarding house in Ybor City that frequently housed Cuban patriot Jose Marti, and that she worked to rally Afro-Cubans and women to gain the island nation's freedom from Spanish rule. The page draws on the state-funded Florida Women's History Trail book, published in 2001.

The Florida Women’s Hall of Fame biography says Paulina Pedroso was born and died in Cuba but, during the years she lived in Key West and Tampa, was very influential in the fight for Cuba's independence from Spain. From the 1880s to 1910, it says, she and Ruperto worked at cigarmaking while organizing La Sociedad Libres on behalf of Cuban freedom, and Marti headquartered his activities in the United States at her Tampa home, which is a park today. The Hall's list of inductees places her in the class of 1993, and its home page says the Hall was created by Florida Statute in 1982.

Pedroso is also remembered on the Tampa Riverwalk. Friends of the Riverwalk lists her among the thirty honorees of its Historical Monument Trail of bronze and marble busts beside the Hillsborough River, designated from 2012 through 2017 with the Tampa Bay History Center.

The City of Tampa's Adamo Drive mural legend calls Marti the George Washington of Cuba and says he visited Tampa more than 20 times urging support for Cuban independence, speaking to crowds from the steps of Ybor cigar factories. It adds that a Marti memorial now stands across the street from the factory where he spoke, on the site of the Pedroso home. The National Park Service notes that Marti visited Ybor City before the 1895 Cuban War for Independence to gather support, and that factory readers spread news of the political situation.

The Afro-Cuban society La Union Marti-Maceo first met in the Pedroso parlor on this Ybor City lot, and Ruperto Pedroso was one of its founders, according to the state historical marker.

Read with the park in mind, the 1998 state marker makes three points about the lot. The society that became La Union Marti-Maceo was organized in 1900 by Afro-Cuban cigar makers; Ruperto Pedroso was counted among its 23 original founders; and its earliest meetings were held in the parlor of his boardinghouse, the corner the marker identifies as Marti Park. The society later built its own clubhouse elsewhere in Ybor City, lost it to Urban Renewal in 1965, and moved to 7th Avenue.

The City of Tampa's Landmarks and Historic Preservation Designations book records that the membership relocated to its current facility at 1226 E. 7th Avenue in 1966. A separate Digital Towns page covers the society and its clubhouse in detail; this page treats the Pedroso lot itself.

Urban Renewal in the 1960s removed much of the Afro-Cuban neighborhood around Marti Park, including the first Marti-Maceo clubhouse and, according to the City of Tampa, the Pedroso home itself.

The City of Tampa's SoulWalk Ybor City guide says the Afro-Cuban neighborhood was located on the western end of Ybor, near The Scrub, and was home to cigar workers and others in associated industries. It records that the Marti-Maceo Club for Afro-Cubans was torn down during Urban Renewal and that the Pedroso Home, now Marti Park, was also razed during the 1960s.

The city's designations book describes the surviving Marti-Maceo building as modest among Ybor City's social clubs but calls its very existence a testimony to the perseverance and commitment of Tampa's Afro-Cuban community. The 8th Avenue park and the 7th Avenue clubhouse now stand a short walk apart in the Ybor City Historic District.

The park is at the corner of 8th Avenue and 13th Street in Ybor City, a block north of the Marti-Maceo clubhouse on 7th Avenue.

The state marker places the site at 13th Street and 8th Avenue, and the City SoulWalk map lists the La Casa De Pedroso marker on 8th Avenue between 13th and 14th Street, Sociedad La Union Marti-Maceo at 1226 E 7th Avenue, and Ybor City Museum State Park at 1818 E 9th Avenue among the nearby Ybor stops. The same guide lists TECO streetcar stops on East 8th Avenue at Centennial Park, Cadrecha Plaza and the Streetcar Society station.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, for the Ybor City park against the Florida Division of Historical Resources marker, the City of Tampa Park Finder, SoulWalk guide, Adamo mural legend and designations book, Hillsborough County's history page, the Florida Women's Hall of Fame and the National Park Service.