In 1915 Mark A. Thompson ( -1935), a native of Chicago, established Thompson & Co., Inc. in Key West as a manufacturer and distributor of fine cigars. According to a timeline on the Thompson Cigar Co. web page for the one hundred year anniversary of the company, in 1920 after a hurricane decimated most cigar factories in Key West including his, Mark A. Thompson moved his factory to Ybor City, located according to this 1931 Sanborn Insurance Fire Map at the southeast corner of 21st Street & 14th Ave. where today is the Ybor City Center Fountain. At this factory Thompson & Co. manufactured cigars with Havana tobacco that included the Empress of Cuba, Royal Palm and Thompson's Tampa brands.

In 1923 Thompson relocated the company’s headquarters to the 23,227 sq. ft. building pictured below at 200 N. Edison Ave. corner with North A St. in West Tampa. This facility was used as a cigar mail‑order headquarters, warehouse and printing facility to support the company’s growing cigar mail‑order business. It served as the base of operations for Thompson & Co. Inc., which became one of the largest and the oldest mail-order cigar company in the United States, so much so that in 1929 Thompson acquired Postal Permit #1 in the city of Tampa.

During its first thirty years or so, labor challenges confronted Tampa cigar factory owners. Workers strikes in 1892, 1901, 1910 and especially the ten-month long strike in 1920 curtailed production levels and were especially difficult for owners. In 1924 Tampa businessman Eli Witt installed the first cigar rolling machinery in his Havatampa plant, which became a highly regarded and efficient cigar business. Owners were slow to follow Witt's lead as they did not want to bear the expense of upgrading to the new equipment, in addition, workers were uncomfortable using machines and insisted on making hand-rolled cigars. The few owners who upgraded to machine made cigars faced worker’s resentment to innovation and made only modest gains. Not until the 1930s did machines become common in Tampa's cigar factories and a few owners, including Thompson & Co. sought relief from both unions and resistance to technological change by moving out of Tampa to open new operations.

Because of its close proximity to Tampa, Polk County was attractive to some cigar manufacturers. In the 1920s, much of the state of Florida as well as Polk County's seat, Bartow, experienced a construction boom. Motivated by the community's developmental success, the local chamber of commerce collected approximately $6,000 to encourage Thompson & Co. to build a factory in Bartow. Plans for a new factory at 255 N 3rd Ave. in Bartow just east of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad tracks, were initiated through the Cuban American Cigar Corp., a subsidiary corporation which Thompson had organized in Tampa ca. 1924.

In late1924, Thompson commissioned the design of the Bartow cigar factory to Detroit architect William H. Odell,* for whom this would be among his early projects. The design in Mission Revival Style is a rectangular one and a half story with approximately 14,000 sq. ft. of floor space between both floors. The industrial building has a large hip monitor with bands of windows, an unusual feature in industrial buildings, in this design it serves as a second floor used to store tobacco. It also appears to have either a full basement or some type of crawl space below grade. Construction of the masonry structure built by William L. Seward of Bartow, began in February 1925 and was completed in June 1925 at a cost of approximately $35,000. That month, production began with two cigar-making machines purchased from the American Machinery and Foundry Company of Brooklyn, NY. Machines acquired in the 1920s cost approximately $3,500 each and required supervision by three employees who could make six hundred cigars per hour, eventually thirty machines were installed in the building.

As can be expected, machine manufactured cigars are more perfect and more rapidly produced than hand-rolled cigars. In 1929 Thompson & Co., Inc. manufactured and sold approximately twenty million cigars and enjoyed sales of $500,000 in large part because of the success of the Bartow plant. In late 1929 the Cuban American Corp. conveyed the Bartow factory to its parent company Thompson & Co. and eventually disappeared. Until 1934 when production at the Ybor City factory was moved to Bartow, no hand-made products were made there. The company operated the Bartow factory until September 1961 shortly after Thompson & Co., Inc. was sold in 1960 to Robert Franzblau (1927-2001) who opted not to purchase the Bartow factory. Franzblau business model called for contracting its cigar production to local Tampa factories like J. C. Newman & Co. and Gradiaz-Annis & Co. who made cigars under the Thompson brands. Both Stanford Newman and Morton Annis served as Franzblau's mentors for many years.

During the 1960s, the former cigar factory served as the headquarters of Bartow's American Legion Post # 3, and between 1969 and 1971 as Polk County Commodities Distribution Center. From 1974 to 1989, the county used the building as its social services warehouse. The Bartow factory building was included in the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. In 1982 Robert Franzblau moved the company headquarters from 200 N Madison Ave. to 5401 Hangar Court in Tampa. The vacant Madison Ave. building was then leased by the University of Tampa for its Facilities Management department and then bought it in 2011 for $1.59 million.

In 2018, Thompson & Co., Inc. was purchased by the Scandinavian Tobacco Group (STG) for $62 million. Thompson & Co., Inc. remained in business at the 5401 Hangar Court location until 2019 when after one hundred four years of Florida based operations it closed down permanently in December 2019. STG who also owns premium cigar maker General Cigar Co., integrated Thompson’s operations into its online and catalog retailer Cigars International facility in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

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* William H. Odell was associated with the world-renowned firms of Giffels & Vallet and Saarinen & Swanson, in May 1946 he became an associate member of the firm Derrick and Gamber after having been a member of staff.