Hacienda Buena Vista, also known as Hacienda Vives (or Buena Vista Plantation in English), was a coffee plantation located in Barrio Magueyes, Ponce, Puerto Rico. The original plantation dates from the 19th century. The plantation was started by Don Salvador de Vives in 1833.Hacienda Buena Vista. Fideicomiso de Conservación de Puerto Rico. 2016. Accessed 30 May 2016.Hacienda Buena Vista. Arlene Pabón. U.S. National Park Service: National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. Page 7. Puerto Rico State Historic Preservation Office. 9 September 1994. Accessed 30 May 2016.
The Hacienda is located on of fertile land that includes a humid subtropical forest some north of Ponce on Route PR-123,"Gente." La Perla del Sur. Ponce, Puerto Rico. Gente section. Story 3. 2 September 2009. in Corral Viejo, a subbarrio of Barrio Magueyes. The plantation house was built in the Spanish Colonial style, with the surrounding buildings being built in the local Criollo style. The original Hacienda covered 482 cuerdas (approx. 468 acres).
It is now owned by the Fideicomiso de Conservación de Puerto Rico (Puerto Rico Conservation Trust), which operates it as a museum which it opened in 1986.
Significance
The Hacienda is significant for various reasons. First, it contains the only remaining example of the Barker hydraulic turbine, which was the first reaction type turbine ever made.Barker Turbine/Hacienda Buena Vista (1853): Only known example of a Barker hydraulic turbine, the earliest practical reaction type. ASME Landmark #177. American Society of Mechanical Engineers. 2 Park Avenue. New York, NY. Obsolete link updated 24 January 2019. It was nominated as a Mechanical Engineering landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in July 1994.R. Sackett, p. 16.Barker Turbine/Hacienda Buena Vista (1853) Nomination. American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Nomination Number 177.
The second reason Hacienda Buena Vista is significant is that it offers one of the best remaining examples of a Puerto Rican coffee plantation. This is important because in the latter part of the nineteenth century the coffee produced in Puerto Rico and exported to Europe and the United States was considered among the finest in the world. It is said to have even been the favorite at the Vatican at the time.Welcome to the World of Cafe Rico. Company History: Vatican Coffee Hacienda Buena Vista is also significant because it shows the evolution of the coffee industry in the region. Various periods can be appreciated. These range from the cultivation of produce such as plantains (1833–1845); to the production of flour (from rice and corn) (1847–1872). These products were staples for the subsistence of the local population.
Brief history Hacienda Buena Vista was started as a truck farm to produce mostly plantains, bananas, corn and avocados, by Don Salvador de Vives in 1833. De Vives was a Catalan immigrant arriving from Venezuela and he set up the farm to sell its produce in the Ponce market and in the sugarcane estates along the southern coast. Originally, the Vives estate covered .
In 1845, the son of Don Salvador added a corn mill operation to the profitable fruit and vegetable production. Later, Don Salvador's grandson oversaw the addition of coffee growing and processing to the plantains and cornmeal, taking advantage of the great coffee-growing boom of the 1880s and 1890s. Don Salvador's son and grandson introduced some of the most innovative farm machinery on the island, powered by a nearby waterfall.Puerto Rico Tourism Company Eventually Hacienda Buena Vista would become one of the most successful plantations in the mountains of Puerto Rico.
A series of hurricanes and the failing coffee market brought operations at the Hacienda to a standstill by 1900, and gradually Hacienda Buena Vista fell into disrepair and was partially abandoned.Buena Vista Plantation Video Information, Compañia de Turismo de Puerto Rico (in English)
By 1937 agriculture had seriously declined in Puerto Rico, and the plantation was abandoned, becoming mostly a weekend country house for the Vives heirs. Worker barracks, outbuildings and equipment deteriorated rapidly under the humid tropical climate and rainfall.
In 1984, the Puerto Rico Conservation Trust bought 86 of the original , with the intention of restoring it. Despite the grave deterioration of the coffee-processing machinery and the farm buildings, the Conservation Trust managed to restore the estate so that it could be used to educate the public about the golden era of fine coffee growing in the mountains of Puerto Rico. The original owners donated many of the furnishings, and the Conservation Trust purchased other authentic pieces.Conservation Trust receives much of Hacienda Buena Vista Furnishings
Hacienda Buena Vista is today a well-known educational destination. The machinery of the original Hacienda has been put in motion again, farm animals roam the grounds, the farmhouse rooms have been furnished, and the scent of freshly roasted coffee fills the surrounding air.Hacienda Buena Vista Plantation Details, P.R. Tourism Company Visitors can take tours through the old Vives country home and explore the plantation buildings and grounds. Authentic 19th-century farm machinery is exhibited that shows how a coffee plantation worked in the 1880s.
Salvador Vives
Migration from Venezuela Salvador Vives arrived in Puerto Rico from Venezuela fleeing the struggle for independence going on in that country at the beginning of the nineteenth century. At the time he was a 12-year Spanish career officer from the province of Catalonia in Spain, who had been stationed in Caracas, until he was forced to leave after the defeat of the Spanish Army in the battle of Carabobo in 1821. It was thus that Vives traveled from Venezuela to Puerto Rico on 27 June 1821 with his wife Isabel Diaz and son Carlos. Accompanying him were also two slaves. He settled in the southern port city of Ponce, where the sugar industry was booming.R. Sackett, p. 17.
Early Puerto Rico years With no capital to buy sugarcane-growing land, Salvador Vives worked for the municipal government of Ponce during the 1820s and 1830s in assisting other displaced Spanish emigrants and also as a public notary. By 1838 he had enough money to purchase of hilly, undeveloped, tropical forest land in barrio Magueyes, to the north of the city of Ponce, and near the Canas River.
The land consisted mostly mountainous terrain with thick forest, and far from the town. Fortunately, Vives was able to purchase the lands relatively cheap for the lands in greatest demand at that time were the rich flatlands near the coast that provided the perfect conditions for the sugar-growing industry. The development of a new road in that area, PR-123, would also guarantee that products from Vives' future farm could be bought down for sale to the marketplace in Ponce with relative easy. The construction of the farm-to-market PR-123 road would prove to be a factor in the success of Vives' hacienda.
Vives’ Hacienda
As a fruits and vegetables hacienda Hacienda Buena Vista grew plantains, beans, yams, and corn which were bought at Plaza del Mercado Isabel II in Ponce by the area sugar plantation owners to feed the slave labor force of their plantations. The hacienda also grew other crops, including cotton, coffee, and rice and it also raised cattle, oxen, mules and horses in the limited lower pastures of the hacienda, in the vicinity of the hacienda's buildings complex. Initially, the hacienda's principal crop was plantain (Musa acuminata × balbisiana). By 1845 there were growing this crop. This acreage grew steadily from the mid-1820s to the early 1840s. Between 1852 and 1860 the production of plantains at the farm had increased from 329,200 to 475,380.R. Sackett, p. 18.
First mill is installed In 1837 Vives purchased a corn mill, a coffee depulper, a cotton gin, and a rice husking machine, all animal-powered, to process its agricultural goods. During the 1840s the hacienda's economic activity had diversified into produce production and corn flour distribution throughout Puerto Rico's central coastal region. The purchase and installation of the corn mill proved to be a great investment for Vives. Not only did his financial earnings multiplied, but he was also able to gain enough prominence to be elected mayor of Ponce, between 1841 and 1845. He served three terms as mayor. During his terms as mayor, Vives had the District Court Center moved from Coamo to Ponce, he also had the City Hall built, and arranged for the official coat of arms of the city with the Spanish crown.R. Sackett, p. 19.
First water-powered corn mill After Salvador Vives' death in 1845, his son Carlos took over the management of the hacienda. "Carlos perceived the production of corn meal to feed sugar plantation slaves would be of enough economic importance to finance the construction of a water-powered corn mill to replace the animal-powered corn mill built by his father. Built between 1845 and 1847, the new corn mill installed by Carlos Vives had a sixteen-foot-diameter wooden water wheel that moved the gears for the grinding stones of the corn mill. Carlos powered the new corn mill with water derived from the waterfall on the Canas River that traveled through a water canal, which was begun in 1847 and completed in 1851. Within the corn mill structure, Carlos also built a corn toasting room where corn was dried before it was milled. Carlos completed many of the hacienda structures and buildings that today are part of the complex, including the slave quarters, the manor house, the warehouse, and the carriage house with stables for horses and mules."
The turbine-driven corn mill The building of the now-historic Barker engine also came under son Carlos Vives tenancy: "In 1847, with the demand for milled corn rising given the increase in sugar plantation slaves around Ponce, Carlos constructed another building for a new corn mill powered with a hydraulic turbine from the West Point Foundry, in Cold Spring, New York. The turbine was patented in the United States, in 1843, by James Whitelaw, of Scotland. The flour from Hacienda Buena Vista gained islandwide prominence due to its excellent quality. From 1847 to 1873, the corn flour of the hacienda reigned supreme over other local mills. Shortly afterwards, a corn mill to pulverize the corn was mounted, and the hacienda's white and yellow corn flour received the gold medal for excellence in the second public exposition celebrated in San Juan in June 1855." In 1860, the hacienda won awards again at the Puerto Rico Exposition Fair.Recorridos en la Hacienda Buena Vista. Periodico La Perla del Sur.
Rise and fall of coffee as a main product Carlos Vives died in 1872. Around this time the sales volume of corn meal, one of the hacienda's primary products, began to decline. Instead of demand for corn meal, world demand for Puerto Rican coffee, was starting to become as significant an export crop as sugar for which Vives could not afford the price of the lands. Envisioning a future for coffee production, in 1892 Carlos's eldest son (also named Salvador Vives like his grandfather) installed coffee depulping and bean husking machine in the old corn mill and ran them both using the original mill wheel. "Production of corn meal and coffee provided a diversified economic basis for the continued success of the hacienda."R. Sackett, p. 20.