Cristoforo Crespi

He was the son of Maria Provasoli and Antonio Benigno “Toni Tengitt” Crespi, a descendant of a family of textile entrepreneurs from Busto Arsizio, VA.

Aided by his father, he converted three different facilities located in three separate municipalities, resulting in the factories of: Vaprio d'Adda (1864), Vigevano (1867) and Ghemme (1869); in the case of the Vaprio mill, he was also helped financially by Ercole Lualdi, but production at this plant was unprofitable due to the American Civil War, which resulted in a consequent “famine” of cotton, thus affecting the European cotton industry.

Cristoforo Benigno purchased an additional spinning mill in Baveno, which he later sold to his son Silvio Crespi.

Aspiring to set up his own factory, he fell back in February 1877, obtaining permission to use a water derivation from the Adda River, which he intended to use as motive power for an erected spinning mill, between the towns of Capriate San Gervasio and Canonica d'Adda; the following year he founded the factory and a workers' village, which in the complex took the name Crespi d'Adda, introducing the most modern spinning systems of the time.

In 1897 a cotton textile industry was created in the province of Milan and the factory and its worker village, called Crespi d'Adda was built on the left bank of the river Adda between the towns of Capriate San Gervasio and Canonica d’Adda where the flow of water provided hydroelectric energy to power the cotton looms.