Cristoforo Benigno Crespi, the founder of the workers’ village, followed in the family footsteps. Indeed, his family had already been in the cotton business for two generations when he embarked on his entrepreneurial career. Given the spread of the Crespi surname in Busto Arsizio, Cristoforo Benigno’s family were given the nickname of “tintori” (“dyers”) and the patronymic of their business always appeared next to their surname, becoming the Crespi Tengitt family.
The man was stubborn, strong-willed, hard-working and never gave up. At work, he achieved his goal after a complex personal journey that also included disappointments and failures. In 1878, Cristoforo founded the workers’ village of Crespi d’Adda at the age of forty-four years.
He married Pia Travelli who bore him five children. Eldest son Silvio Benigno would be the one who, having taken the reins of the Benigno Crespi cotton mill, would complete his father’s project, creating a factory that was entirely vertical and integrated into the workers’ village, the unaltered appearance of which can still be admired today.
After a career as a student, entrepreneur – alongside his father in 1889 – and even politician, Silvio Benigno would experience a slow yet inexorable decline that would take him from representing high institutional offices (Automobile Club of Italy, Banca Commerciale Italiana) to complete oblivion and the sad epilogue of his existence.