An old general store, brick factories, and the history of the horse-drawn Rural Tramway

"Bricklayer," "potter," or "baker." Any of these appellations perfectly suits Cucullú to highlight the deep-rooted tradition of its brick kilns , a craft production that enjoyed its heyday in the second half of the 20th century with the fires lit in 50 factories.

Although affected by successive crises, those flames never fully subsided, and even today the town's most representative production can be seen in stacks of bricks arranged in pyramids, drying in the open air.

The columns of smoke rising in the rural surroundings seem to be wooing the entrance to this area of ​​the San Andrés de Giles district through 9 de Julio Street.

From Route 7, the 4-kilometer stretch of the only paved road points straight to the area's nascent culinary appeal, which flourishes at the foot of the white tower of the Santa Teresita del Niño Jesús chapel, built in 1960 and restored last year.

On one hand, the aromas of country breads, black or pork rind cakes, puff pastry empanadas in sweet and savory versions, croissants, and sliced ​​cookies waft from the wood-fired oven of the Santa Teresita bakery .

A central part of local history is told in this business run by Silvia Rossi, which her parents Mabel Freggiano and Julio César Rossi (mayor of San Andrés de Giles between 1983 and 1987 and councilor for eight years) opened in 1967, at the height of the brick industry's boom.

The bakery's location has always been a landmark for residents and travelers who traveled along the original route of Route 7.

Long before the captivating aromas of the bakery filled the atmosphere of Cucullú, an Automobile Club agency, a Texaco service station, and a bus terminal operated successively on the same corner.

Among the pastry specialties of Santa Teresita, the Corrientes biscuit and the chipá prepared by the López brothers also stand out, a clear sign of the presence of settlers from the Litoral, Santiago del Estero, and Bolivia who put their hands to molding bricks with a mixture of crushed clay, straw, dung, and cowhide around the drying sheds.

Remnants of Cucullú's most luminous period also resist the passage of time on the platform and the building of the inactive station , the starting point of the urbanization, driven by a timely donation of land from the Basque merchant Juan Simón de Cucullú, who settled in the area in 1847.

The first stop on the Rural Tramway , a single horse-drawn carriage that connected Chacarita with San Andrés de Giles , was established in 1887.

It was later replaced by a convoy pulled by a steam locomotive , which preceded the faster route of the Urquiza Railway. This passenger service from Lacroze to Rojas ran until 1993, signaling a decline that finally materialized in 1998, with the arrival of the last freight train.

The modest popular festival that neighbors began to share when they noticed the approaching train has been replicated every November since 2006, when the Fiesta del Hornero and Cucullú , Pueblo Alfarero, is celebrated.

During these events, eagerly awaited throughout the year, visitors learn to value the work of the hardworking kiln workers, who are honored with a monument—representing the bricklayer with his typical triangular wheelbarrow—in the Plaza del Hornero in the Itatí neighborhood.

On one side of the main street, Rodolfo “Fito” Gallo revives the illustrious past of the general store Bar Casa Gallo .

He converted it into a country restaurant in 2018 , aiming to captivate customers with the unparalleled flavors of his clay-oven empanadas, sautéed rice, mushrooms, and meat, sirloin steak with fried potatoes and eggs, lentil stew, and churrasquito pork. These are regional cuisines at their finest.

“My great-great-grandfather Bartolomé and his brother Jorge Gallo were immigrants from Cuneo, in the Italian region of Piedmont. Bartolomé dedicated himself to animal breeding, and Jorge opened this business in 1880, before the arrival of Federico Lacroze's Rural Tramway,” Gallo recalls, standing among the tables set up in the courtyard, where a watermill casts the shadow of its slender silhouette.

Ten paces from the restaurant, between the walls of the Cucullú Athletic Club (a bastion of social gatherings since 1929), the voices of rural workers engrossed in a game of truco—accentuated by a well-timed drink—and dairy farmers, accustomed to unloading their carts full of milk jugs, seem to resonate.

But the path is now a place of passage filled with silence and the murmur of an autumn breeze, barely disturbed by the moderate trill of a whistle, determined to remain sheltered in the canopy of a tree.