At its peak in the 1920s, Tampa had 150 cigar factories where 500 million cigars were rolled by hand each year, earning it the name "Cigar Capital of the World." El Reloj became one of Tampa's most famous cigar factories when it opened in 1910 and was reported to be the largest cigar factory in the world, designed for 1,000 cigar makers who could hand roll more than 250,000 cigars daily. Exemplary of Tampa cigar factories, it was a brick building oriented east to west with three stories, a basement, and a tower, and its iconic clock tower gave it the name El Reloj, or "clock" in Spanish; because few people owned clocks or watches when it was built, Ybor City residents used the bell from its tower to tell time. E. Regensburg & Sons operated the factory until 1951. Julius C. Newman, born in Austria-Hungary in 1875, came to the United States with his family in 1888, learned hand rolling in Cleveland after his mother paid a small factory three dollars per month to teach him, and after being laid off during a severe recession, started his own business with an order for 500 cigars, fifty dollars borrowed for tobacco, a table made from old wood boards, and the family barn converted into a one-man factory. On May 5, 1895, J.C. Newman Cigar Co. began, and by 1910 it was the largest cigar factory in Cleveland. The company merged in 1927 to become Mendelsohn & Newman Cigar Manufacturers, Inc. In 1953, J.C. sent his elder son Stanford to Tampa to investigate rolling cigars there, and the next year bought El Reloj and relocated the family business from Cleveland to Tampa. In 1997, Stanford restored the company's name to J.C. Newman Cigar Co., and in 2020, for its 125th anniversary, J.C. Newman restored El Reloj, which remains the last working cigar factory in Tampa.