Pruitt-Igoe
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Pruitt-Igoe-collapses.jpg
The Pruitt-Igoe housing project, originally built in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, has been regarded as one of the most infamous failures of public housing in American history.
Designed in 1951 by architect Minoru Yamasaki (who would later design the 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 representative in Congress. It consisted of 33 11-story apartment buildings on a 57 acre (230,000 m²) site, totaling 2,870 apartments, and was completed five years later. Prior to the projects' 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-WWII federal housing program, as an attempt to bring people back to the city, but within a few years it quickly fell into disrepair and disuse, heavily vandalized by its own residents.
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 breeding grounds for 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.
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Today, the site of the former projects is empty, with only trees and dusty paths marking the spot. Many plans for development of the area have been suggested, but none have been carried out; among other reasons, the removal of Pruitt-Igoe's concrete foundations, which are still buried, would be very expensive.
Cultural theorists have suggested that the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe marks the death of modernism and the start of the postmodern age.
Footage of the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe was incorporated into the film Koyaanisqatsi.
See also
- Ballymun flats, in Dublin, Ireland
Further Reading
Books and articles
- 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).
External links
- Mary Delach Leonard, Pruitt-Igoe Housing Complex (http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/special/pd125.nsf/0/AB4B1191EB6948C186256E04006BBBCD?OpenDocument), St. Louis Post Dispatch historical summary, 13 January 2004.
- Oscar Newman, Creating Defensible Space (http://www.defensiblespace.com/book.htm) (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, 1996).