''The Pruitt-Igoe Myth'' is a 2011

documentary film A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

detailing the history of the

Pruitt–Igoe The Wendell O. Pruitt Homes and William Igoe Apartments, known together as Pruitt–Igoe (), were joint urban housing projects first occupied in 1954 in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. The complex of 33 eleven-story high rises was design ...

public housing Public housing, also known as social housing, refers to Subsidized housing, subsidized or affordable housing provided in buildings that are usually owned and managed by local government, central government, nonprofit organizations or a ...

complex in

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an Independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Miss ...

, and the eventual decision to raze the entire complex in 1976. The documentary argues that the violent social collapse within the Pruitt-Igoe complex was not due to the demographic composition of its residents, but was a result of wider, external social forces, namely the declining economic fortunes of St. Louis, the resulting impact upon employment opportunities, and the project's failure to meet occupancy projections from the start and therefore to meet monthly income projected to cover maintenance costs. Furnaces made to incinerate garbage failed, pipes/plumbing failed, and more issues kept on to the point residents stopped paying rent.

Synopsis

The film begins with a former resident of the

public housing complex returning to the site of the buildings in the north side of

St. Louis St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a populatio ...

, and noting that in spite of the decades since the planned demolition of the buildings, the site remains largely vacant. It continues by detailing the decision by the city to replace 19th century

tenement A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, E ...

housing with high-rise

, ultimately designed by

Minoru Yamasaki was an American architect, best known for designing the original World Trade Center in New York City and several other large-scale projects. Yamasaki was one of the most prominent architects of the 20th century. He and fellow architect Edward ...

(later the famed designer of the

World Trade Center World Trade Centers are the hundreds of sites recognized by the World Trade Centers Association. World Trade Center may also refer to: Buildings * World Trade Center (1973–2001), a building complex that was destroyed during the September 11 at ...

) in the

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

style as thirty-three 11-floor buildings. Interviews with former residents, archival images, and film are used to tell first impressions about moving into Pruitt-Igoe and the steady deterioration of living conditions during the 1960s and early 1970s before the destruction by planned implosion between 1972 and 1976. The film takes issue with the various explanations for the failure of the Pruitt-Igoe complex that have developed since its demolition, including that it was the fault of the modernist theory of architecture itself (an explanation developed by architectural historian

Charles Jencks Charles Alexander Jencks (June 21, 1939 – October 13, 2019) was an American cultural theorist, landscape designer, architectural historian, and co-founder of the Maggie's Cancer Care Centres. He published over thirty books and became famous i ...

) or of the general concept of public housing. Instead, the explanation offered is that the fate of the Pruitt-Igoe project was determined by the declining population and industrial base in St. Louis after

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. The documentary argues that this process left few jobs for the remaining residents, thus reducing funds available for maintenance and security of the buildings, which were planned to be paid for by tenant rents even as residents grew poorer and the living conditions in the project deteriorated.

Reception

''The Pruitt-Igoe Myth'' has a rating of 89% on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

based on 19 reviews, and a rating of 70 (out of 100) on

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

based on 8 reviews. It was nominated for a

Satellite Award The Satellite Awards are annual awards given by the International Press Academy that are commonly noted in entertainment industry journals and blogs. The awards were originally known as the Golden Satellite Awards. The award ceremonies take place ...

in 2012 in the category of Best Documentary Film. It also won the International Documentary Association's ABC News VideoSource Award for best use of archival footage.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pruitt-Igoe Myth, The 2011 films American documentary films Documentary films about urban studies Documentary films about African Americans History of St. Louis Documentary films about cities in the United States Films shot in St. Louis Films set in St. Louis Documentary films about Missouri 2010s English-language films 2010s American films Public housing in St. Louis English-language documentary films

Synopsis

Reception

See also

References

External links