General Cigar Company
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General Cigar Company
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Southern side of the building
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| Location | 223 NW 2nd St., Evansville, Indiana |
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| Coordinates | 37°57′51″N 87°34′30″W / 37.96417°N 87.57500°WCoordinates: 37°57′51″N 87°34′30″W / 37.96417°N 87.57500°W |
| Area | Less than 1 acre (0.40 ha) |
| Built | 1902 |
| Built by | Harry Boyle and Company; Alfred E. Neucks |
| Architectural style | Arts and Crafts |
| NRHP Reference # | 00000212 |
| Added to NRHP | March 15, 2000 |
General Cigar Company is one of the largest manufacturers of cigars in the world. It is a subsidiary of Scandinavian Tobacco Group. The General Cigar Company building at Evansville, Indiana was built in 1902, and expanded in 1929. It is a three-story, "L"-shaped red brick building with Arts and Crafts style design elements. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.
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, 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's Cohiba cigars bear a disclaimer that they are not affiliated in any way while the Cuban-brand individual cigars do not.
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