About this property
General Cigar Company is the largest manufacturer of premium cigars in the world. It is a subsidiary of Scandinavian Tobacco Group with North American headquarters located in Richmond, Virginia. In 1961 General Cigar, which was profitably selling about $30 million worth of cigars annually, was purchased for approximately $25 million by a group of investors headed by Edgar M. Cullman (brother of then Philip Morris Company CEO Joseph Cullman), a fourth generation American in the tobacco industry. Later in the 1960s, Culbro and General Cigar acquired Gradiaz Annis, maker of Gold Label cigars and the Temple Hall factory that owned the Macanudo brand name, ushering in a turn towards hand-rolled premium cigars. Macanudo, a small label made in limited quantities for the market in the United Kingdom, was seen as the principal vehicle for growth in the premium cigar category. A careful effort was made to reblend the product for the large American marketplace (then and now subject to a ban on Cuban tobacco, the industry's gold standard) using select binder and filler from the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Mexico and Connecticut shade-grown wrapper. Mass advertising was conducted in support of the brand, which by the early 1990s had grown into the best selling premium cigar label in the United States. In 1978 General registered a U.S. trademark on the brand name "Cohiba", thereby obtaining the right to use the name of that premium Cuban cigar in the American market without any connection to or content provided by its Cuban maker. Protracted legal wrangling followed, resolved when the U. S. Supreme Court denied the petition of the Cuban tobacco marketing agency, Cubatabaco, in 2006. General Cigar's Cohiba cigars bear a disclaimer stating that they are not affiliated in any way with the Cuban Cohiba brand. From 1978 General Cigar has also produced the Cuban tobacco free Partagas and Bolivar cigar brands for the American market in competition with Cuban brands of the same name. Initial production of Partagas was conducted in Jamaica, but the following year production moved to a modern 70,000-square-foot (6,500 m2) factory in Santiago, Dominican Republic. A similar trade dress to the Cuban product has been used by General Cigar for its competing version of the Partagás brand, employing a red-and-gold band scheme, save with the word "Habana" replaced by the date "1845" on the packaging. In 1997, General Cigar acquired Villazon, a company marketing non-Cuban versions of the leading Cuban cigar brands Punch and Hoyo de Monterrey. In 2005, Swedish Match acquired General Cigar. In 2010, Swedish Match merged its premium cigars into Scandinavian Tobacco Group.
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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).
Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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Questions about this property
When was General Cigar Company listed on the National Register?
General Cigar Company was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 15, 2000.
What type of historic resource is General Cigar Company?
General Cigar Company is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.
What is the period of significance for General Cigar Company?
The period of significance for General Cigar Company is recorded as the industrial era, specifically around 1906.
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