Death of Modernism

Demolition has never been a concept I associated with architecture. However, the iconoclasmic death of Pruitt-Igoe, and the influence of media, put into perspective the demise of an architectural era. The death of modernism itself was punctuated by such a widely broadcasted event. This fueled me to further investigate the happenings of Pruitt-Igoe that led to the tragic events of March 16^th 1972. I watched “Pruitt-Igoe Myth: An Urban History”, a documentary that follows the lives of individuals affected by Pruitt-Igoe’s construction and its destruction.

Pruitt-Igoe was an urban housing project that began in a 1950’s St. Louis as an initiative, by businessmen and politicians, to dispose of the slums; a bothersome blemish in the urban landscape of the city. It was touted as a solution. Pruitt-Igoe would rise victoriously out of the slums and the city would prosper respectively. Housing developments were commercializing a low-cost urban housing project that would offer a community, safety, and to be a part of the modern movement. To the lower class of society, this was nothing short of a goldmine. However, as maintenance efforts ran short, and federal income no longer supported the project, living conditions took a hit. Vandalism, prostitution, and drug trafficking all saw their fair share of time in Pruitt-Igoe. Rapidly it became the slums it had been trying to eradicate. However, this time, it bore the face of modernism wrapped around two decades of segregated housing for the poor.

The “Pruitt-Igoe Myth: An Urban History” is a documentary that draws a lot from primary sources; it is founded on the interviewees and their familiarity with Pruitt-Igoe. Their history in Pruitt-Igoe comes from their experiences in a difficult environment that was festering in the urban housing project. The documentary reinforces the stories of the interviewees with various types of video clips: advertisements of the housing project, older interviews, home-made videos, etc. The Freidrichs brothers bridge an emotional gap through the eyes of the interviewees and their poignant stories. Moreover, two sides of the stories are shared, rather than offer a one-sided bias outlook. This gives the documentary a touch of realism, as the interviewees were chosen for their similar struggles but different attitude on those struggles.

The documentary opened with Sylvester’s visit to the land that once occupied Pruitt-Igoe. He describes the trees, questioning how long it takes for them to grow, expressing a longing for the old Pruitt-Igoe, very similar to the emotions of other interviewees. Freidrichs brothers structure the documentary with archival footage that takes viewers into a linear interpretation of how history played out with the housing development project. These kinds of footages help to not only be a reliable source, but also aid in repainting conditions and environments to how they played out during a different time. Each interviewee had their own story to bring to the table (Jacquely with her 12 sibilings, Ruby and her poor man’s penthouse, Valerie and her police days, the death of Brian’s brother, etc…) and in the heart of those stories was the biases themselves. As an example, Brian King’s brother was shot dead at a young age and this shaped him to despise the system that he was forced to live in, and embrace a “fight or flight” living style. He has no love for Pruitt-Igoe, different from Jacquelyn Williams who labled her days in Pruitt-Igoe as “some of the best memories [she] has”.

Sources, like those of all the interviewees, in my opinion, are the most important sources, more than the short video footages and the facts spewed off by the narrator. Pruitt-Igoe is nothing if not the product of those who occupied it. I believe it is essential to understand from the simple men and women that lived there, how the project failed. This is because Pruitt-Igoe was left to grow by itself, without the aid of government funding; it was propelled by nothing more than its community. The project could only go as far as the community could push it forward, which was not a lot, as time passed. That being said, it is difficult to have created an objective argument from this documentary that is so tangled in emotions and biases. Perhaps, it is not the best argument for Pruitt- Igoe, if it does not involve the people and their emotional attachments to the place that cost them so much grief and/or delight.