Pruitt-Igoe
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Pruitt-Igoe was an urban housing project built in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. It was frequently criticized by business and real estate interests, and is often used as an example of the failure of American public housing and urban renewal.
Controversy over the project remains, based mostly on racial and social-class perspectives. Similar projects were highly successful in other larger cities, but St. Louis has a unique character and political climate. This was elaborated upon in the Harvard University study on public housing in American cities, and in reports by actual residents (see bibliography). During the Nixon administration, Pruitt-Igoe was widely publicized as a failure of government involvement in urban renewal, and the destruction of the buildings was dramatized in the media to show the American public that government intervention in social problems only leads to waste, and to justify cutbacks on social and economic "equalization" programs. Wealthy St. Louisans had also objected strongly to the artificial racial integration, and the resulting decrease in property values.
The Pruitt-Igoe housing project was one of the first demolitions of modernist architecture and its destruction was claimed by postmodern architect Charles Jencks to mark, "the day Modern Architecture died."[1] Dramatic footage of the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe was incorporated into the film Koyaanisqatsi.
[edit] Background and development
Designed in 1951 by architect Minoru Yamasaki (who would later design New York's World Trade Center), the complex was named for St. Louisans Wendell O. Pruitt, an African-American fighter pilot in World War II, and William L. Igoe, a former U.S. Congressman. Originally, the city planned two partitions: Pruitt for black residents, and Igoe for whites. But as segregation was ruled unconstitutional in the 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, the project was opened as racially integrated that same year. But within two years, most white residents had found the means to relocate.
It consisted of 33 11-story apartment buildings on a 57 acre (23 hectare) site on St. Louis's lower north side, bounded by Cass Avenue on the north, N. Jefferson Avenue on the west, MLK Drive on the south, and N. 20th Street on the east. The complex totaled 2,870 apartments, and was completed in five years. Prior to the project's construction, the land was known as the De Soto-Carr neighborhood, an extremely poor section of St. Louis. The project was commissioned as part of the post-World War II federal housing program, as an attempt to bring people back to the city. Within a few years it was heavily vandalized and quickly fell into disrepair and disuse.
Many of the architectural design elements of Pruitt-Igoe, such as its galleries and "skip-stop" elevators (which stopped only at the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth floors in an attempt to lessen congestion), turned out to be at best inconveniences and at worst facilitators of crime. The buildings remained largely vacant for years, and after several failed attempts to rehabilitate the area the St. Louis Housing Authority began demolition of the complex on March 16, 1972.
Critics cited the failure of Pruitt-Igoe as an example of how planned urban communities fail. The complex had been designed as an attempt to emulate public housing projects in New York City, but with little regard for social and economic differences between the two cities. Explanations for the failure of Pruitt-Igoe are complex. While Yamasaki's architectural design often is blamed, economic decline of St. Louis as wealthier residents left for the suburbs, losses of the Vietnam War, and politicized local opposition to government housing projects also played a role in the project's decline.
Only after tenants petitioned for their installation were playgrounds added between the buildings. The inhabitants of the Pruitt-Igoe complex organized a fairly active tenant association, which worked to bring about community enterprises such as craft rooms for the women of the complex to get together, socialize, and create ornaments, quilts and statues for sale.
The 1972 demolition of the buildings after only eighteen years of use signaled the end of the lifestyle of Pruitt-Igoe residents. Links in the bibliography provide various perspectives on the controversial buildings.
Today, the site of the former projects is used as the site for Gateway Middle School, a magnet school based in science and technology within the St. Louis Public School district.
[edit] Other images
 Windows in P-I vandalized after abandonment. |
 Carr Square, across the street from P-I. |
 Artist's conception of Pruitt-Igoe communal space. |
[edit] See also
- Cabrini-Green, Another infamous housing project
- Ballymun Flats, in Dublin, Ireland
- Red Road (flats), in Glasgow, Scotland
- Panel house
[edit] References
- ^ Charles Jencks. The Language of Post-Modern Architecture. Rizzoli. 1977. Page 9.
[edit] Further reading
- Sociological study of Pruitt-Igoe: Lee Rainwater, Behind Ghetto Walls: Black Families in a Federal Slum (Chicago: Aldine Pub. Co., 1970).
- Elizabeth Birmingham, "Reframing the Ruins: Pruitt-Igoe, Structural Racism, and African American Rhetoric as a Space for Cultural Critique," Positionen 2.2 (1998).
- "Confessions in Stone" Stranger than Fiction by: Chuck Palahniuk Doubleday, 2004.
[edit] External links
- Pruitt-Igoe is at coordinates Coordinates:
- Mary Delach Leonard, Pruitt-Igoe Housing Complex, St. Louis Post Dispatch historical summary, 13 January 2004.
- Oscar Newman, Creating Defensible Space (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, 1996).
- Randall Roberts "It Was Just Like Beverly Hills", Riverfront Times, June 1, 2005.
- Alexander von Hoffman Why They Built the Pruitt-Igoe Project, Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University.
