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” – is made up of three houses located in Via Bovisasca at numbers 201, 203 and 205 respectively. The precise location is important to understand the identity of the houses probably built at the beginning of 1900. There are two versions on the genesis of the name. The first concerns 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, which later took the name of Quarto Oggiaro, 203 in Affori and 205 in Novate Milanese
The second version concerns the panorama that at the beginning of the 1900s appeared to visitors of the time. Since all the surrounding land was used for agriculture, mainly corn, the only buildings that stood out on the plain were these three houses that rose like heads of garlic on the horizon.
The corn grown near the Tri Coo D’Ai and the soft wheat grown near the Paolo Pini Psychiatric Hospital (inaugurated in 1924 with the name of Villa Fiorita) was then taken to the mill located where the LIDL supermarket is now.
The building located at no. 201 was a typical terraced house and while the tenants lived on the first floor, the ground floor was intended to house the animals, usually cows.
At the beginning of the century, 50 families lived at the Tri Coo D’Ai, about 180 people.
All the fields surrounding the buildings belonged to the Brambilla family who later sold them, in the early 1950s, to the Montecatini group.
The inhabitants of Tri Coo d’Ai worked in the fields as farmers or were workers who reached the factories of Bovisa every day.
There were no means of transport and people moved on foot or by bicycle.
In via Bovisasca, in front of the three houses, the Garbogera stream flowed, which was then 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 (visible today near the new cemetery of 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, fish, crayfish, frogs and newts. In fact, the stream was fed by the numerous springs it encountered along its path. The waters of the Garbogera stream 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 the water worsened considerably to the point of making it a practically sterile stream. Today it 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 today - the boys, in the summer months, bathed and 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, in addition to the canals, could 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 because there were 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. (Posteria, we write it for younger people, was a very particular little shop because it sold everything, a minimarket so to speak). Then there was a dairy managed by the Galelli family and finally the bar of Mrs. Carmela, from 1945 to 1950, then replaced in the management by Mrs. Adele who in addition to the bar and tobacconist introduced the game of billiards in the place. The Bar dell’Adele for many no longer young people in the area, was the meeting point of the neighborhood.
However, the Adele did not serve food, if you needed a restaurant in the neighborhood you could go to dalla Franca (Via Maffi n. 35) who in addition to the bar prepared dishes every day for the workers in the area.
At 205 lived then Mr. Galelli who in addition to repairing bicycles was also a gas engineer and when the gas cylinders in the houses ran out, usually on Sundays, you went to Mr. Galelli who promptly with his Ape brought the cylinder to be replaced.
In the early 1960s, on Via Bovisasca, at the crossroads between 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 traffic of goods between Milan and Novate every day.
If you bought something in Novate – many inhabitants of Bovisasca went there because there were excellent butchers with convenient prices – returning to Milan you had to pay the duty, or an import tax. Many then preferred to choose the via dei campi so as not to pass in front of the workers and therefore, as they still say today, "so as not to pay the duty".
Two more architectural notes. The first concerns the walls of the houses in Via Bovisasca at 203 were made of reed walls. The reed mixture were walls prepared with 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, for these purposes, plasterboard is used or, in a more virtuous and green way, today's CalceCanapa (hemplime) soft and flexible hemp fiber insulating panels. The reed walls had the advantage of maintaining high thermal insulation and were an excellent solution for the cold days of the Milanese winter. They were also breathable and resistant to mold and parasites. The second architectural curiosity always concerns the house at number 203: if you observe it by standing in Via Bovisasca, facing the sidewalk opposite the house, with the trees of the park behind you, you will notice a particular optical effect, certainly intended by the builder, played between the roof of the first house and the roof of the building behind it, an illusory effect that denotes constructive astuteness.