The Pruitt-Igoe Myth

US | 2011 | 83 min | Director: Chad Friedrichs | pruitt-igoe.com

The story of the transformation of the American city in the decades after World War II is told through the lens of the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing development and the St. Louis residents who called it home. Built in 1956, Pruitt-Igoe was heralded as the model public housing project of the future, “the poor man’s penthouse.” Two decades later, it ended in rubble – its razing an iconic event that the architectural theorist Charles Jencks famously called the death of modernism. The footage and images of its implosion have helped to perpetuate a myth of failure, a failure that has been used to critique Modernist architecture, attack public assistance programs, and stigmatize public housing residents. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth seeks to set the historical record straight by examining the interests involved in Pruitt-Igoe’s creation and re-evaluating the rumors and the stigma.