Lopez, George

Roberts City was a Tampa, FL neighborhood located between West Tampa and the Hillsborough River, bounded on the north by the river, on the west by North Boulevard and on the south by Cass Street. It was established in 1893 when the Ellinger cigar factory moved to the area from Key West, and was originally known as Ellinger City. The Ellinger factory closed in 1902, and after the J. W. Roberts and Son cigar factory opened in 1909, the neighborhood became known as Roberts City.

Roberts City was home to an ethnically and racially diverse community of Cubans, Italians, Spaniards and people of African descent. The economic center of the area was the Roberts cigar factory. During the 1930s and 1940s, Roberts City was an important center for the sport of boxing. The Roberts factory closed in the late 1950s, depriving the area of its principal employer, and the neighborhood was obliterated by Urban Renewal in the late 1960s.

The Roberts City Collection consists of essays and notes on Roberts City and various individuals and families that lived in the community, photographs of families, individuals and buildings, and news articles about Roberts City. The collection was donated to the USF Library in 2001 by George Lopez, Roberts City's unofficial historian and a native son of the vanished community. Mr. Lopez added more materials to the collection in June 2006.

From the guide to the Roberts City collection, 1920-2006, (USF Tampa Library - Special & Digital Collections)