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A century-old Ybor City connection: Raul Lavin and the Cuban Club building

 
Raul Levin, the oldest living member of the Cuban Club in Ybor City. This photo was taken on Thursday, May 7, 2015 when he was 98. Last month, both he and the Cuban Club buildng turned 100.
Raul Levin, the oldest living member of the Cuban Club in Ybor City. This photo was taken on Thursday, May 7, 2015 when he was 98. Last month, both he and the Cuban Club buildng turned 100.
Published May 8, 2017

TAMPA -- Raul Lavin and the Cuban Club building have been linked for 100 years.

Lavin was a member of the club the moment he was born on April 18, 1917.

That same month, construction began on the four-story, 17,000-square-foot Cuban Club building at 14th Street and Palm Avenue in Ybor City.

Lavin's key to longevity and good health and mental clarity at his age?

"I have no idea," he said. "If I knew I'd bottle it up and be a millionaire."

As for the neoclassical building's secret for still standing after a century?

That's a little easier for Cuban Club leaders to answer. It's Lavin.

"What he did was heroic," Rolando Perez Pedrero, a former Cuban Club president and current member said. "He sounded the alarm. Without Raul, the building was lost."

The Cuban Club's first clubhouse - a wooden one - burned down in 1916.

By the 1990s, the second, yellow-brick building, erected the year after the fire, seemed like it would also be lost. It had fallen into disrepair. Pigeons lived inside, the roof was leaking, and walls were decaying from plumbing-related water damage.

Club membership had dropped from 8,000 in its 1930s heyday to a few hundred. And only a fraction of those members were actively supporting it.

The lack of incoming dues not only made fixing the building difficult, but it kept the club behind on mortgage payments so that foreclosure threatened.

Then, in 1992, Lavin founded the non-profit Cuban Club Foundation. He recruited community leaders of all ethnic backgrounds to join by selling them on the importance of saving the historic building.

They succeeded by holding fund raisers, soliciting donations and securing grants to get up-to-date on the mortgage, then worked to restore the structure.

That foundation continues to fund the building's upkeep.

"Who knows who would have bought it if we failed? Maybe Joe Redner," Lavin said with a laugh.

Lavin wishes he could have celebrated his 100th birthday at the Cuban Club. But a bad spill on his scooter resulted in injuries that sent him to Accentia Health and Rehabilitation Center in North Tampa for most of April and through early May.

Still, his mind is sharp and he remains the Cuban Club's top historian.

The Cuban Club, like other immigrant mutual aid societies, was founded to provide members with a myriad of services, including a medical clinic, pharmacy, ballroom, theater, cantina and even a bowling alley.

"It was called cradle-to-the-grave services," Lavin's cousin and Cuban Club member Lloyd Carrera said. "Or in (Lavin's) case, pregnancy to the grave."

Lavin's parents, Cuban natives who came to Ybor City to work in its cigar industry, signed him up as a Cuban Club member a month before he was born.

His fondest early memories of the club are of attending live performances there. Among the national acts booked back then were Cab Calloway and Count Basie. Local talent included Velia Martínez, who later became a starlet in Cuba.

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At 19, Lavin became the club's youngest-ever board member, and he would later serve as its president.

When the club's outdoor patio was renovated in the 1930s to host upscale private events, his future wife Dora Lavin's bridal shower inaugurated it.

And when the immigrant social club outlived its original purpose, , Lavin was among those who reinvented the Cuban Club building as an events venue, helping sustain the organization's mission of keeping Tampa's Cuban culture alive.

"He's still an active board member," said former Cuban Club president and current member Patrick Manteiga. "He's a constant, our link to our history."

Lavin's family's connection to the Cuban Club actually dates to its inception in 1902 when his uncle Eladio Paula became its first president.

And Lavin's parents gave to the cause of erecting the current clubhouse that boasts ornate stained glass windows and elaborate ceiling murals.

"That building is part of our history," Lavin said. "We can't lose it -- ever. I know I won't be around forever but I hope the Cuban Club is."

Contact Paul Guzzo at pguzzo@tampabay.com. Follow @PGuzzoTimes.