Note: This is an old publication. My mother was carrying me when these buildings came dowm. We lived in the low-rise developments a few blocks away & had family in the Pruitt-Igoe. I lived in the same projects until I was 28. The P-I site is now a decent & thriving apartment development for low to middle income families.
Pruitt-Igoe and the End of Modernity
(Pictures from http://www.defensiblespace.com/book/illustrations.htm)
The federally funded Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis was designed by St. Louis architects George Hellmuth and Minoru Yamasaki in 1951. It was thought to be the epitome of modernist architechture--high-rise, "designed for interaction," and a solution to the problems of urban development and renewal in the middle of the 20th Century. Pruitt-Igoe opened in 1954 and was completed in 1956. Pruitt-Igoe included thirty-three, eleven story buildings on a 35 acre site just north of downtown St. Louis.
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"These structures were no anomaly. Instead, the Pruitt-Igoe project was the product of a larger vision of St. Louis government and business leaders who wanted to rebuild their city into a Manhattan on the Mississippi. Other redevelopment schemes of the time, for example, placed middle- and high-income residents in buildings that actually rivaled Pruitt-Igoe in height and scale."
"There is, moreover, no evidence that redevelopment plans intended to make an all-black, all-poor enclave at DeSoto Carr, which had been a poor area housing both whites and blacks before it was razed. An early scheme would have produced a majority of middle-income black residents. The final plan designated the Igoe apartments for whites and the Pruitt apartments for blacks. Whites were unwilling to move in, however, so the entire Pruitt-Igoe project soon had only black residents." ("Why They Built the Pruitt-Igoe Project," Alexander von Hoffman, Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University: http://www.soc.iastate.edu/sapp/PruittIgoe.html).
(Pictures from http://www.defensiblespace.com/book/illustrations.htm)
"The problems were endless: Elevators stopped on only the fourth, seventh and 10th floors. Tenants complained of mice and roaches. Children were exposed to crime and drug use, despite the attempts of their parents to provide a positive environment. No one felt ownership of the green spaces that were designed as recreational areas, so no one took care of them. A mini-city of 10,000 people was stacked into an environment of despair."
"In his 1970 book "Behind Ghetto Walls," sociology professor Lee Rainwater condemned Pruitt-Igoe as a "federally built and supported slum." His study outlined the failure of the housing project, noting that its vacancies, crime, safety concerns and physical deterioration were unsurpassed by any other public housing complex in the nation."
""Pruitt-Igoe condenses into one 57-acre tract all of the problems and difficulties that arise from race and poverty and all of the impotence, indifference and hostility with which our society has so far dealt with these problems," Rainwater wrote." (PRUITT-IGOE HOUSING COMPLEX, By Mary Delach Leonard, Post-Dispatch, 01/13/2004)
(Pictures from http://www.defensiblespace.com/book/illustrations.htm)
The first building was demolished on March 16, 1972 shortly after 3:00 PM. The demolition of the entire complex was completed in 1976. Today, much of the site still stands vacant, except for the school, Gateway Institute of Technology, located on Jefferson Avenue near Cass Avenue, at the western end of the Pruitt-Igoe tract.
The failure of Pruitt-Igoe represents to many the failure of modernist thinking and high-tech solutions to social problems (rational planning built on objectivist models of human behavior).
Useful Links:
- "Why They Built the Pruitt-Igoe Project," Alexander von Hoffman, Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University: http://www.soc.iastate.edu/sapp/PruittIgoe.html (local copy)
- PRUITT-IGOE HOUSING COMPLEX, By Mary Delach Leonard, Post-Dispatch, 01/13/2004 (local copy)
- Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt-Igoe
- Defensible Space: http://www.defensiblespace.com/start.htm
URL: http://www.umsl.edu/~rkeel/pruitt-igoe.html
Owner: Robert O. Keel: rok@umsl.edu
Last Updated: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 2:37 PM
Unless otherwise noted, all pages within the web site http://www.umsl.edu/~rkeel/ © 2006 by Robert O. Keel.
Interesting... So similar in intent and direction of Chicago's low to no income housing projects. Over recent years most of the housing projects in Chicago have been destroyed and residents have been "shipped" out to suburban and surrounding locations. But for the most part, most of those housing project sites have become home to high priced condos which most of those previous residents can't or probably wont ever be able to afford... I think what some thought back in the day to be an ingenious idea as far as affordable yet "confined" locations would have been the answer to so many problems, but it just shows that in any city that side ways thinking didnt solve the problem.... Just exposed more people to crime, violence, drugs, and sometimes almost lower than poverty level living. Thank God for a new day, Right!
ReplyDeleteIt is very interesting to know how these ideas came about and turned south. We don't have "projects" like that here. But we do have places we call "the projects". It's enlightening to see where the term was derived.
ReplyDeleteWow they looked almost decent from the outside. Looked way better than the ones Newark, NJ had. I remember visiting family who lived in the Newark Projects as a child. Those projects were demolished long before they thought about doing Newark. Now they are replaced with affordable row houses. Definately a change for Newark. But still bad people are moving into them and not keeping the upkeep. I wish some of our people had a sense of pride for home. No matter where you live make the best of it and safe for you and your children.
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