The Yellow House Café was established in the A. Martinez building in the mid-1920s and was frequently the location of legal problems. A court order banning the sale of intoxicants was delivered in December of 1928 to this and several other restaurants and cafes. The case was continued in 1929. In 1932, building owner A. Martinez pleaded guilty to Bolita peddling and was fined $51. Rumors prevailed that the building was the location of an illegal casino run by the Tampa mob, with possibly a brothel upstairs. In 1941, the Yellow House Café was finally granted a license for beer and wine, and by the mid-1940s, it had changed its name to Yellow House Bar.

The U.S. Senate subcommittee on crime named Yellow House owner Augustine Primo Lazzara one of 19 Tampans on the Mafia Organizational chart. When he died in 1968, he was under federal indictment.  That same year, the building was the target of Urban Renewal officials who contemplated buying it. In June of 1988, Thom Lewis and partner Scott Kjeer purchased the structure for $300,000 and spent around $60,000 to renovate it to open the Tampa Eagle restaurant. That November, a three-alarm fire gutted the building. Construction company GVZ Group purchased the shell for $348,000 in 2006, planning an $800,000 office building renovation. It wasn’t until 2017, with the shell still standing, the firm submitted plans to the city. The lot, now empty, is for sale or development by GVZ.

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