Columbia Restaurant - Florida's Oldest Restaurant - Preserves and Creates History

Florida's Oldest Restaurant, The 106-year-old Columbia Restaurant, founded in Tampa's Historic Ybor City in 1905 is restoring, preserving and creating history by repairing hundreds of colorful tiles that surround its 52,000 square foot façade.

Watch as Treasure Island artist Judith Villavisanis painstaking restores each individual tile, surrounded by constant traffic passing alongside her while she works.

The tiles were originally placed on the façade in 1973 by Cesar Gonzmart, 3rd generation family member, as part of a beautification project for The Columbia that created murals facing 7th Avenue and also along the 21st street façade. These tiles are terra cotta tiles, and were made in Sevilla, Spain in the 1930s.

The tiles form sweeping, colorful murals around a panel commemorating Columbia's distinction as "Florida's oldest restaurant," with its founding in 1905 by first generation family member Casimiro Hernandez Sr., along with the Five Forks rating given by the Spanish Government in 1965. Other murals show Christopher Columbus arriving in the new world. Still other tiles form colorful panes with vases; some are filled with fruit, some with flowers.

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Travel & Events

Tags:

• Columbia Restaurant
• Ybor City
• Florida's Oldest Restaurant
• 1905