Pruitt-Igoe and the Crunden Branch Library: Public Housing and Public Libraries in Post–World War II St. Louis

Abstract

ABSTRACT For residents of St. Louis, the name “Pruitt-Igoe” invokes mental images of forbidding urban blight. A large government-subsidized housing development, Pruitt-Igoe was built with fanfare from the architectural community in the late 1950s, but it quickly deteriorated and was demolished in the 1970s. This study sheds new light on the Crunden Branch Library, which was intentionally built adjacent to Pruitt-Igoe to serve its residents and the surrounding neighborhood. Even during the housing development's hardest years, the library was recognized as a safe space for reading, learning, and cultural programming, and it often served as a space for community action. The story of the Crunden Branch is necessarily intertwined with local and national social and economic trends, contentious federal funding, and the purpose-driven urban librarianship of the late 1950s through the 1970s. It also provides a new perspective on St. Louis and the housing development itself.