Review: The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, by Chad Freidrichs, director, in association with the Missouri Historical Society

Abstract

Chad Freidrichs, director, in association with the Missouri Historical Society The Pruitt-Igoe Myth First Run Features, 2011, DVD, 83 min. $25.95 http://www.pruitt-igoe.com The documentary film The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is arguably the best historical record available of the ill-fated St. Louis high-rise housing project, completed in 1956 and demolished with much publicity in the early 1970s. The film combines wrenching interviews with articulate former residents—many of whom spent their formative childhood years in the project in its earlier, more optimistic phase—extensive period clips, and a limited amount of accessible scholarly commentary to create an extraordinary viewing experience. The Pruitt-Igoe story is part of one of the best-known episodes in the twentieth-century migration of many African Americans from poverty in the rural South to what until the 1950s were plentiful low-wage industrial jobs in northern industrial cities. When it was begun in 1950 with federal funding and the enthusiastic support of white St. Louis politicians and civic leaders, the Pruitt-Igoe project was considered innovative because it combined what was intended as a whites-only public housing “district,” the William Igoe Homes, with an adjacent black “district,” the Captain Wendell O. Pruitt Homes (named for an African American World War II pilot, one of the Tuskegee Airmen). The film refreshingly does not waste much time on the now-tired controversy over whether the project’s spectacular failure was the result of the hubris of modern architects inspired by Le Corbusier and CIAM or some combination of racist institutional malevolence and tenant criminality. Instead, it reveals clearly that although the project was indeed built (at great expense) without many of the amenities usually found in American multifamily housing of any kind, it was nonetheless deeply appreciated by many of its first tenants. Rare film footage of the elegantly furnished apartments and cheerful …