Hacienda Buena Vista, also commonly referred to as Hacienda Vives, should not be confused withHacienda Buena Vista in Las Marias, Hacienda Buena Vista in Maricao or Hacienda Vives in Guayama.  This Hacienda Vives, located in Barrio Magueyes of Ponce, was established in 1833 by Salvador Vives Rodó (1784-1845), a Spanish Government Officer from Gerona, Catalonia who arrived in Puerto Rico with his Caracas born wife Isabel Diaz (1774-1852), son Carlos and two slaves from Venezuela in 1821 after the Spanish Army was defeated in the Battle of Carabobo. 

Originally, the main products cultivated at the hacienda were plantains, beans and yams.  In 1845, after the installation of a water powered corn mill, cornmeal became its main product and in the last twenty years or so of the 19th Century, coffee replaced cornmeal as its main product. After Salvador's death in 1845, the hacienda was inherited by his son Carlos Vives Diaz (1817-1872) who managed it until 1872. From 1872 to 1927 its administrator was Carlos' son Salvador Vives Navarro (1847-1937).  It was Vives Navarro who transformed the hacienda into a coffee plantation.  Haydée Reichard in an essay written about the Schömburg family, states that Teodoro Guillermo Schömburg Bercedoniz (1845- ), a Puerto Rico born and Germany educated engineer and one time owner of Hacienda Fortuna in Isabela, designed the blueprints for Hacienda Buena Vista in Ponce.  Schömburg’s design must have been for the conversion to coffee processing. At its height, Hacienda Buena Vista produced and processed more than 10,000 pounds of coffee per year for shipment to Europe. 

In 1859 Salvador's son Carlos M. Vives Diaz and his wife born in La Nueva Barcelona, Venezuela Guillerma Navarro Martinez, built a home on Atocha Street in Ponce which is pictured in one of the galleries in the PR Architecture page and is considered one of the classical structures in the Ponce Historic District.  Carlos and Guillerma had two sons; Salvador Vives Navarro (1847-1937) and Carlos Vives Navarro (1858-1918).  Salvador never married, lived the house and continued to operate the hacienda until shortly before his death.  Carlos became a physician, married Cuban born Elena Bazan Gimenez and had six children.

Hacienda Buena Vista last year in operation was 1950. In 1956 the government of Puerto Rico expropriated most of its land to redistribute them in small parcels to local people. In 1984 the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico purchased the remaining eighty seven acres and buildings from the Vives family and restored it to much of its past glory. 

Hacienda Buena Vista was included in the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.  The registration document has a thorough description of the hacienda's machinery and structures as well as a brief biography of Salvador Vives and the history of how the hacienda was started and developed from a corn, to a coffee and then to an orange producing plantation.  Available at the Library of Congress is the 1977 Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) report, which contains a series of photos by Jack E. Boucher and drawings which document the hacienda.

​As documented by the plaque pictured below, this hacienda has the only known existing example of a Baker Turbine in the world.  As stated above, in 1984 the Conservation Trust purchased the property and owns it to this day.  The pictures below were taken in February 2015. The hacienda is now a museum and can be visited by contacting the Trust which is now called Para La Naturaleza.