The Castle (Ybor City)

The Castle is a nightclub in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida, United States, associated largely with the goth subculture. Located in the Ybor City Historic District, the building previously served as the second site of the Cooperative El Primero Progresso (officially the Agrupacion Benefica y Cultural del Centro Obrero), or the Labor Temple, a place for Ybor City's cigar and restaurant workers to engage in union activities and organization. The Castle building was originally constructed in 1930 as a clubhouse for the Knights of the Golden Eagle, and was known as the Cristobal Colon castle. The building is a two-story structure faced with brown brick, featuring a turret. It began its tenure as the second Agrupacion Benefica y Cultural del Centro Obrero building in 1968, when Ybor City's previous Labor Temple building, a nearby white-stuccoed structure built in 1925, was demolished. In 1992, the ground floor of the Castle building was bought by Alan Kahana and reopened as a saloon on Guavaween. Kahana eventually purchased and remodeled the entire building. By the late 1990s, the Castle began catering to the goth subculture, and has since cemented itself as a popular nightclub for goth and industrial music. The Tampa Bay Times has referred to the Castle as "a Tampa institution, every bit a part of Ybor City culture as cigars and trolleys", as well as "Ybor's goth mecca".

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