Bohemia Historical Society
The Cigar Factories of Bohemia
The cigar-making capital of Suffolk County
For roughly six decades, the dirt roads of Bohemia smelled of curing tobacco. Long before Long Island became suburban — and long before the cigarette overtook the cigar — this small Czech hamlet was the cigar-making capital of Suffolk County. At its peak, eight large factories and dozens of small backyard “buckeye” shops turned out millions of cigars a year, almost all of them bound for New York City.
1855–1910s
How Cigar Making Came to Bohemia
The 1855 founders of Bohemia — the Vavras, Kratochvils, and Koulas — were not cigar makers. They were musicians, cabinet makers, and would-be farmers who came east from the tenements of New York City for cleaner air and cheaper land. The cigar industry arrived with the second wave of Czech immigration that followed.
Between roughly 1868 and 1871, dozens of Czech cigar makers left the crowded shops of Manhattan and made their way to Bohemia, drawn by family ties, lower living costs, and the chance to work for themselves. They brought a craft already perfected in the Old Country, where tobacco manufacturing had been a regulated trade under the Austrian government since the 18th century. In Bohemia, that craft met cheap land, hungry New York markets, and a tight-knit Czech-speaking workforce — and it took off.
By the late 1880s and into the 1910s, cigar making was the engine of village life. Steady wages from the factories helped fund the 1893 founding of the Bohemia Fire Department, the construction of the 1903 schoolhouse, and the brick storefronts that defined the growing downtown.
Ocean Avenue
The M. Foster Cigar Factory
Located on Ocean Avenue north of Church Street, the M. Foster Cigar Factory was the largest commercial operation in the village and the industrial heart of Bohemia for decades. The Foster family transitioned the local economy away from small home shops and into a real factory model — a steady, scaled production line that employed dozens of residents who walked to Ocean Avenue each morning.
Foster’s “Bohemia Cigar” became a recognized brand in New York City, and the factory drew hundreds of new Czech immigrants to the area looking for work. It remained one of the dominant employers in the hamlet right up through the Great Strike of 1912, when local cigar makers walked out for months, demanding better wages, improved conditions, and union recognition. The strike ended in a partial victory for the workers and cemented Bohemia’s reputation as a pro-labor town.
After the strike, the industry never fully recovered its earlier swagger. World War I disrupted markets, the rise of cigarettes ate into demand, and — most decisively — the spread of automated cigar-making machines made hand-rolling uneconomical. By the early 1930s, the factory had ceased operations, a victim of the Great Depression and mechanization. (After standing vacant for years, the building was repurposed in 1934 as the American Robe Company, a wartime bathrobe and medical-garment factory that burned to the ground on October 31, 1952.)
Regional Competitors
The Albert Holecek Factory
While Foster dominated Ocean Avenue, the Holecek factory dominated Pearl Street. Operated by Albert Holecek, this was the village’s other large-scale commercial cigar manufacturer through the “Golden Age” of the 1910s. It employed a sizable workforce of skilled Czech immigrants and, alongside Foster, established Bohemia as a regional manufacturing powerhouse before mechanization changed the industry forever.
The Frank Huml Factory
A short walk away, on Smithtown Avenue, sat the Frank Huml Factory — a story of multi-generational immigrant success. Frank Huml Sr. arrived in 1890 with his son Frank Jr. The elder Huml started out as a blacksmith before moving into the cigar trade, eventually opening the Huml Hotel on Smithtown Avenue (later known as the Central Hotel and run by the Stejskal family — a Bohemia institution famous for heaping platters of dumplings, sauerkraut, and pork).
The Huml cigar business prospered alongside the hotel. Although the main factory burned down in 1931, Frank Jr. had already built a more substantial commercial structure on Smithtown Avenue in 1926 — and that building still stands today, a tangible piece of Bohemia’s industrial past hidden in plain sight along the avenue. Frank Jr. (who passed in 1949) and his wife raised a large family at the site, keeping the trade alive through the lean years of the Depression.
The Albert Kovanda Factory
At the corner of Lakeland and Smithtown Avenues stood the Albert Kovanda cigar factory, the most prominent of the Czech-owned “neighborhood” operations. The Kovandas straddled the line between the big commercial factories and the smaller buckeye shops: their operation was larger and more visible than a backyard shed, but rooted in the same family-and-neighbors workforce that defined Bohemia’s cigar trade.
Cottage Industry
The “Buckeye” Shops
For every Foster or Holecek, Bohemia had dozens of “buckeyes” — slang in the cigar trade for the small, independent, often family-run shops that filled in around the big factories. The buckeyes were Bohemia’s true cottage industry.
Most followed the same simple design: a two-story wood-frame structure with the cigar shop on the ground floor and the family’s living quarters upstairs. By day the parents worked the bench, rolling cigars by hand; by night, the children might be put to work stripping stems from tobacco leaves. The sign of a successful Bohemia family was a tidy vegetable garden out front and a busy little cigar shop out back. Families like the Kovariks, Thumas, Stochls, and Pundas all ran buckeyes — and many residents who worked daytime shifts at Foster’s would come home in the evening and roll another hundred cigars at their own bench for extra income.
This dual structure — large factories and a constellation of family workshops — was unusual among Long Island towns and gave Bohemia its distinctive character. Cigar making was not just an industry here; it was a way of life that connected nearly every household.
Post-1930s
The End of an Era
Several forces ended Bohemia’s cigar age. The 1912 strike weakened the largest factories. World War I disrupted both labor and supply. The cigarette steadily overtook the cigar in American smoking habits through the 1920s. And — most decisive of all — automated cigar-making machinery made the hand-rolled craft economically obsolete. By the early 1930s, the last of the commercial factories had shut down. No cigar factories remain in Bohemia today.
What does remain is the imprint. The brick buildings the cigar wages helped build. The Fire Department the cigar makers founded. The family names — Foster, Holecek, Huml, Kovanda, Kovarik, Thuma — that still appear in census records, on cemetery stones, and on the deeds of homes up and down Smithtown Avenue. And tucked in among the modern streetscape, a handful of the original structures, like the 1926 Huml building, still quietly stand.
When Czech immigrants settled in Bohemia in 1855, they brought more than just their culture—they brought a trade. By the late 19th century, this small hamlet was the cigar-manufacturing hub of Long Island. While men and women toiled in the fields during the day, their evenings were often spent at the “buckeye” bench—small workshops in their own homes—rolling cigars by hand. At its peak, Bohemia was home to eight large factories and dozens of smaller family shops, producing millions of cigars annually for the New York City market.