The Wendell O. Pruitt and William L. Igoe housing blocks were originally drawn up in 1952 as two racially-segregated, \u201cmodernist\u201d high rise developments in St. Louis.\u00a0 Pruitt was for blacks on the north side of town, and Igoe was for whites on the south side. \u00a0Failure to secure the south side parcels of land in a timely manner led to the developments being combined on one 57 acre site to the north of the city. There were some whites who lived at Pruitt-Igoe when it opened in 1954.\u00a0 However, that year\u2019s US Supreme Court\u2019s decision<\/a> forcing desegregation effectively transformed Pruitt-Igoe into an all black community.<\/p>\n Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project, St. Louis<\/p><\/div>\n The film successfully debunks one of the myths that I completely agree surrounds Pruitt-Igoe\u2014that black culture and the absence of proper middle-class values were responsible for community\u2019s disintegration. \u00a0Although the sample is very small, interviews with former residents reveal the pride and love that people had for the place.\u00a0 One describes her 11th<\/sup> floor apartment as a \u201cpoor man\u2019s penthouse.\u201d\u00a0 Others fondly (and even tearfully) recall the buildings being illuminated by hundreds of lights at Christmas time, the appealing aromas of many dinners being prepared, and the lively \u201cblock party\u201d atmosphere created by record players being pulled to doorways and windows.<\/p>\n I confess to using Pruitt-Igoe in my teaching in the second \u201cmythical\u201d sense that \u00a0Katharine Bristol<\/a>, in a 1991 article in the Journal of Architectural Education<\/em>, sought to debunk: that modernist architecture was to blame for the community\u2019s disintegration. \u00a0\u00a0I\u2019ve always found something pedagogically useful in Charles Jencks’<\/a> famous equating of the controlled (and nationally-televised) implosion of Pruitt-Igoe’s first tower at\u00a03:00 PM on March 16, 1972 with “the death of modernism.” \u00a0 The issue is whether this is overstating things.\u00a0 Friedrichs’ film does not really address Pruitt-Igoe\u2019s architecture one way or another, treating it more as a setting and backdrop for behaviors that are better explained in other ways. \u00a0But it clearly channels the essence of Bristol\u2019s argument.\u00a0 In his talkback Friedrichs pulled no punches in dismissing the role that architecture played in the housing project’s disintegration.\u00a0 He noted that modernist high rises for poor people were constructed in many other American cities throughout this period and most of those didn\u2019t suffer the same fate as Pruitt-Igoe.<\/p>\n The Death of Modernism: March 16, 1972, 3:00 PM<\/p><\/div>\n The alternative explanation suggested in the film, and reiterated by Friedrichs in his talkback, invokes a complex mix of economic and social factors that brought many American cities\u2014especially St. Louis\u2014into crisis after World War II.\u00a0 De-industrialization produced dramatic job losses in urban cores.\u00a0 Federal housing and highway policies incentivized white flight to suburbs. \u00a0Projected increases in urban population size did not pan out as cities were rebuilding, and overbuilding, their centers. \u00a0St. Louis hit its population peak of around 850,000 people in 1950 and it was all downhill after that. \u00a0The St. Louis Housing Authority planned Pruitt-Igoe\u2019s construction but failed to plan for its maintenance. \u00a0Upkeep money had to come from tenant rents, but as occupancy declined, poverty deepened, and costs escalated the money just wasn’t there. \u00a0St. Louis Housing Authority policy also prohibited able-bodied adult males from inhabiting the apartments of women receiving welfare assistance. This contributed to the break-up of families and frayed the community\u2019s social fabric.\u00a0 Police stopped coming to the projects when the muggers and drug-dealers moved in.\u00a0 Racial discrimination, including institutional racism, complicated the lives and life chances of the residents.\u00a0 Pruitt-Igoe\u2019s undoing was, as one interviewed expert opined, a \u201cslow motion Katrina.\u201d<\/p>\n I certainly agree with the importance of these economic and institutional forces\u2014also nicely detailed in Bristol\u2019s article\u2014in determining Pruitt-Igoe\u2019s fate.\u00a0 But given the importance of architecture in human affairs and, especially, its role in transforming built space<\/em> into owned place<\/em> \u00a0it seems short\u2013sighted\u2014and inconsistent with any explanation that invokes \u201ccomplexity\u201d of cause\u2014to rule it out completely.\u00a0 Even Bristol notes that architectural design was one factor in Pruitt-Igoe\u2019s disintegration, albeit not the most important one.\u00a0 Mention is made in her article, and also throughout Friedrichs’ film, of how various design elements conspired against residents.\u00a0 These include deliberately small apartments, undersized kitchen appliances, inadequate plumbing, and other cheap furnishings.\u00a0 Undersized elevators that \u201cskip-stopped\u201d on every third floor increased the personal risk to women and children (especially when things started deteriorating after 1957) by forcing them to reach their apartments through long corridors and narrow staircases.\u00a0 The elevator stop \u201cgalleries\u201d themselves\u2014intended to support community association\u2014came to be described by residents as \u201cgauntlets.\u201d \u00a0The open, park-like spaces around modernist towers have never been particularly inviting or well-used areas no matter where they\u2019ve been built, and Pruitt-Igoe was no exception. \u00a0The standardized, non-human scale of the towers\u2014nicely captured by the film\u2019s compelling aerial and ground level photographs\u2014gives off a decidedly sinister vibe when viewed from particular angles and in particular lights.<\/p>\n Pruitt-Igoe Corridor<\/p><\/div>\n I\u2019m also tempted to suggest that the small apartments, and perhaps even the shared spaces, were incompatible with the social values borne by migrants coming into St. Louis from the south who, ultimately, traced their heritage to the strong communal cultures of West Africa.\u00a0\u00a0 Some reviews of the film (e.g., here<\/a>) note that the nearby Carr Square Village<\/a>\u2014a low rise, lower density development with a comparable demographic makeup that was built in 1942\u2014did not suffer from the vacancy and crime that afflicted Pruitt-Igoe. Interestingly, Pruitt-Igoe was originally designed as a mix of buildings of varying heights and densities rather than the 33 eleven-story high-rises that were eventually built. We\u2019ll never know if the Pruitt-Igoe story would have been different had the original design plan been approved.<\/p>\n Carr Square Village (from Oscar Newman, Creating Defensible Space)<\/p><\/div>\n Bristol rightly notes that failure to acknowledge wider political and economic conditions too often leads us to blame the people who\u2019ve been victimized by those conditions. She notes that architects can\u2019t be blamed for Pruitt-Igoe either, given their powerlessness to change the wider structures, practices, and attitudes that governed its construction. In another sense, however, architecture is the most<\/em> important causal factor in Pruitt-Igoe\u2019s story because it\u2019s the one variable that was always under some sort of direct human control.\u00a0 Pruitt-Igoe\u2019s architects were clearly working under strict constraints imposed by the St. Louis Housing Authority.\u00a0 But the design team consciously opted for the modernist program when other choices were available, and even Bristol notes that they were \u201cinsensitive\u201d to the consequences of their choices.\u00a0 Erring too much on the side of structural causality risks absolving these agents of too much responsibility. \u00a0There are times when the debate about Pruitt-Igoe should<\/em> be diverted to what Bristol calls \u201cthe question of design.\u201d \u00a0Today architects are increasingly taking advantage of their power of choice\u2014and improved intercultural literacy\u2014to design affordable housing that\u2019s more livable and lovable<\/em>\u00a0(e.g., here<\/a> and here<\/a>). \u00a0Perhaps the most important lesson of Pruitt-Igoe is that we should always and everywhere see the life and death of buildings as complexly overdetermined<\/em> in ways that encourage us to take greater responsibility for those things in life that we can, in fact, influence and control. In that sense Pruitt-Igoe hasn’t been, and doesn’t deserve to be, demythologized.<\/p>\n Postscript<\/em><\/strong>: Carr Square Village has been replaced with even lower-density single family housing. The site of Pruitt-Igoe remains a ruin<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/800px-Pruitt-igoeUSGS02.jpg\" "\\"800px-Pruitt-igoeUSGS02\\"")
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