The Tri Coo D’Ai - Farmhouse
The Tri Coo D’Ai
Location: Via Bovisasca 201, 203, 205
Construction: early 1900s
Il Tri Coo D’Ai – from the Milanese dialect “Tre Teste d’Aglio” – consists of three houses located in Via Bovisasca at numbers 201, 203 and 205, respectively. The precise location is significant to understand the identity of these houses, probably built at the beginning of the 1900s. There are two versions of the origin of the name. The first relates to the location of the buildings, which at the beginning of the last century belonged to three different jurisdictions: 201 was under the administration of Quarto, later renamed Quarto Oggiaro, 203 belonged to Affori and 205 to Novate Milanese
The second version concerns the panorama that early 20th-century visitors would have seen. Since all the surrounding land was used for agriculture, mainly for growing corn, the only structures standing out on the plain were these three houses, rising like heads of garlic on the horizon.
The corn grown near the Tri Coo D’Ai and the soft wheat cultivated near the Paolo Pini Psychiatric Hospital (inaugurated in 1924 under the name of Villa Fiorita) were then taken to a mill located where the LIDL supermarket now stands.
The building at no. 201 was a typical terraced house. While the tenants lived on the first floor, the ground floor was used to house animals, typically cows.
At the beginning of the century, 50 families, approximately 180 people, lived at Il Tri Coo D’Ai.
All the fields surrounding the buildings belonged to the Brambilla family who later sold them to the Montecatini group in the early 1950s.
The inhabitants of Tri Coo d’Ai worked in the fields as farmers or were workers who traveled to the factories of Bovisa every day.
There were no means of transport, so people moved on foot or by bicycle.
In via Bovisasca, in front of the three houses, the Garbogera stream flowed, which was later buried in the late 1960s.
The Garbogera (Garboeugia or Garboeugiola in the Lombard language) is a stream that crosses the province of Monza and Brianza, the province of Milan and the Groane Park, flowing into the sewer system of via Bovisasca in Novate Milanese (now visible near the new cemetery in Novate).
Canals that received water from the Villoresi and were used to irrigate the fields in Bovisasca converged in the Garbogera. This stream was once populated by a vast aquatic fauna, including fish, crayfish, frogs and newts. In fact, the stream was fed by numerous springs along its path. The waters of the Garbogera were mainly used to irrigate the fields and as a driving force to move some mills - no longer present today - in the territory of Novate Milanese. At the end of the 19th century, with the advent of industrialization in the territories north of Milan, the quality of water worsened considerably, making it almost sterile. Today, the stream remains dry for most of the time, filling up with water from sewer overflows only during heavy downpours.
In the Garbogera and in these canals (springs) between the fields - where the buildings of Via Litta Modigliani are now located - the boys used to bathe during the summer months. According to all the people who still remember those days, the water was clear and crystalline.
Since there were no swimming pools in the area, the kids could also bathe in the quarries located beyond the North railway in Quarto Oggiaro or in another quarry where the Metropoli hypermarket is now located. Bathing in the quarries was very dangerous due to frequent whirlpools and eddies and many people unfortunately lost their lives there.
The Tri Coo d’Ai, in the desert landscape of the early 1900s, could however boast some historic shops. First of all, the Posteria della Natalina, which sold everything from needles to transatlantic ships. (For younger people, Posteria was a very particular little shop that sold a wide variety of goods, like a minimarket). Then there was a dairy run by the Galelli family and finally the bar of Mrs. Carmela, which operated from 1945 to 1950. It was later managed by Mrs. Adele, who, in addition to the bar and tobacconist, introduced the game of billiards. The Bar dell’Adele, for many of the neighborhood’s older residents, was a meeting point.
However, Adele’s bar did not serve food, if you needed a meal in the neighborhood you could go to dalla Franca (Via Maffi n. 35) who, in addition to the bar, prepared meals every day for the local workers.
At 205 Mr. Galelli lived there and, in addition to repairing bicycles, was also a gas engineer. When the gas cylinders in the houses ran out, usually on Sundays, people would go to Mr. Galelli who would promptly deliver a replacement cylinder with his Ape vehicle.
In the early 1960s, on Via Bovisasca, at the crossroads of Via Amoretti and Via Litta Modignani, in the territory of Novate Milanese, there was the Customs House where, in a guardhouse located on the sidewalk, two or three workers checked the flow of goods between Milan and Novate every day.
If you bought something in Novate – many inhabitants of Bovisasca went there because of the excellent butchers with convenient prices – you had to pay the duty when returning to Milan, an import tax. Many people preferred to take the via dei campi route to avoid passing by the workers and, as they still say today, "to avoid paying the duty”.
Two more architectural notes. The first concerns the walls of the houses at Via Bovisasca 203, which were made of reed walls. Reed mixture walls were made from lime and plant reeds, woven and plastered in order to obtain a resistant surface. It was used for false ceilings and internal dividing walls. Today, plasterboard is used for these purposes, or, in a more eco-friendly approach, CalceCanapa (hemplime) soft and flexible hemp fiber insulating panels. The reed walls had the advantage of maintaining high thermal insulation, making them an excellent solution for cold Milanese winters. They were also breathable and resistant to mold and parasites. The second architectural curiosity still concerns the house at number 203: if you observe it by standing in Via Bovisasca, facing the sidewalk opposite the house, with the park’s trees behind you, you will notice a particular optical effect, certainly intended by the builder, created between the roof of the first house and the roof of the building behind it. This illusory effect suggests a clever design.