Havana Historic District

ABOUT THIS PLACE

Havana was incorporated in 1906 and named for what it grew. Shade tobacco, used to wrap fine cigars, would only do well in two places in the United States: this part of north Florida and the Connecticut River Valley. When the railroad arrived in 1902 the crop became seriously profitable, and after the Second World War those two regions together produced about 95 percent of the country's shade tobacco. Then it went. By the 1960s the market had moved to Central America and elsewhere, and the town was left with nothing to sell. The recovery began in 1983, when an antique dealer moved down from Tallahassee and leased downtown space to other dealers. That turned into what the town is now: antique shops, galleries and restaurants in the old buildings, with historic houses on the National Register nearby. The Planters Exchange, a National Historic Landmark, holds a number of vendors under one roof along with a museum of the tobacco business that built the place. The town calls itself Florida's friendliest small town, and it is fourteen miles northwest of Tallahassee, which makes it an easy half-day