(4/5)
The famous image above represents the myth of Pruitt-Igoe, a low-cost housing project in St. Louis from the 1950s and ’60s that has attained legendary status as a failure of modernism, of modern architecture, of public housing, and of government funded programs in general. But is that the whole story, documentarian Chris Freidrichs wondered, and are there more things to learn from Pruitt-Igoe other than “public housing doesn’t work”?
Pruitt-Igoe was built in the early 1950s, a group of several large, multi-story apartment buildings on a 57-acre area of land just northwest of downtown St. Louis. The city had a large low-income population working in the factories and warehouses along the river, which had created a slum that the city wanted to be rid of for health, aesthetic, and business reasons. Pruitt-Igoe was seen as the solution to urban overpopulation, and by 1954 families were moving by the droves from one-room shacks into bright, clean apartments in the brand-new buildings. But as the years went on, the buildings weren’t maintained, vandalism and crime became rampant, and by the mid-1960s, Pruitt-Igoe had gained a terrible reputation, with law enforcement eventually even avoiding the place. In 1972, the place was condemned and demolished, the experiment in low-cost public housing proclaimed a failure. In addition, it’s often looked at from an architectural perspective as one of the last great modernist structures, built on strong towering lines of form following function – when it fell, so did modernist ideals of architecture. But though that’s how Freidrichs got interested in the story, the documentary focuses much more strongly on the social history of the project.
The film follows the development from concept to demolition, intercutting modern-day interviews with former residents of Pruitt-Igoe with archival footage and photographs to try to build a picture not only of Pruitt-Igoe throughout its twenty-year existence, but of the other historical factors that affected its lack of success. It’s easy to want to look back and lay blame with the government (“they didn’t maintain it the way they should’ve, didn’t follow through on their promises”) or with the residents (“they didn’t care enough to keep it up themselves and engaged in riotous and criminal behavior”), but Freidrichs, drawing on more than two years of extensive research for the film, insists there are far more factors involved, and that Pruitt-Igoe’s negative reputation needs to be re-evaluated in some ways.
The interviews indicate what a beacon of hope Pruitt-Igoe was in the beginning, as one woman tells of being able to move their family of twelve from a three-room slum shack into a spacious, bright, and clean apartment with a wonderful view and lots green spaces for the children to play. Another talks about her “penthouse” on the eighth floor. Yet another talks about how there was always music playing and dancing, lots of parties and good times happening all the time, and how she always felt safe there. But there are stories from the other side, too, including one man who seems to have lived there later in the development’s life, after crime became more rampant and drug lords started moving into empty buildings. And though it would’ve been clearer if Freidrichs had included the dates the interviewees had lived there, it doesn’t seem entirely clear-cut between early/late, though there is a definite and precipitous decline. Many of those who praise Pruitt-Igoe recognize the bad things that went on, but claim that it didn’t affect everyday life there as much as those on the outside would like to think.
In between the interviews, a voice-over (by Jason Henry) discusses the changes in the city of St. Louis and American culture at large that led to depopulation of the urban centers, which in St. Louis especially led to a drastic decrease of tax income for the City of St. Louis. Essentially Pruitt-Igoe was built with the expectation of a vastly overpopulated downtown which would need low-cost housing to alleviate the overcrowding and yet also provide a large population of taxpayers to support the housing. This is the opposite of what happened, as St. Louisans who could afford it moved out of town entirely. It is still true today that St. Louis has a very wealthy suburban population and an almost dead downtown. Freidrichs seems to lay much of the blame for Pruitt-Igoe’s failure on this simple situation of population decline, which does definitely seem to play into it. There were other factors, too, of course, including the big business push to get rid of the slums so they could gentrify downtown (which has implications for current gentrification pushes as well, not just in St. Louis, but in every town), the intentional racial segregation that was essentially built into Pruitt-Igoe’s foundation, the welfare rules that split families apart (to me, this was one of the most horrifying things the documentary brought up, indicating that to receive welfare, there couldn’t be a man in the house, so fathers had to leave their families so the women and children could move into Pruitt-Igoe), etc.
Watching the film certainly didn’t make me proud of my home town, especially in terms of the welfare rules (I’m not sure if those were municipal or federal rules, though) and the racial segregation, which continues to plague St. Louis, but the documentary is fair in highlighting many sides of the complicated story. The city didn’t have much control over the population movement or the way suburbia became synonymous with the idea of the American dream, nor are the residents of Pruitt-Igoe absolved either, as vandalism and crime erupted and yet residents often attacked police and firefighters as symbols of “the man” to the point that outside help finally stopped coming to Pruitt-Igoe. The picture painted here is fascinating, rich, and multi-faceted. There may have been no way to save Pruitt-Igoe or make it work, but understanding the many things that contributed to its failure may show better ways to proceed in the future. Certainly better than simply pointing to Pruitt-Igoe and claiming that it proves such initiatives do not and cannot work.
Director: Chad Freidrichs
Screenplay: Chad Freidrichs, Jaime Freidrichs
Producers: Chad Freidrichs, Jaime Freidrichs, Paul Fehler, Brian Woodman
Starring: Sylvester Brown, Robert Fishman, Joseph Heathcott, Brian King, Ruby Russell, Joyce Ladner, Valerie Sills, Jacqueline Williams
Running Time: 83min
Country/Language: USA, English
US Theatrical Release Date: no US distribution
You like most white americans, find it difficult to reconcile what is the myth of america and reality. Instead of recognizing the inhumane treatment of poor black people and their predictable response to it, you look for every conceivable excuse to exonerate the obvious intentional nature of the goverments actions. I’m the former resident, that, i feel, gave the only realistic depiction of what life was like living in the hell that was pruitt igoe. And yet, critics like yourself, choose to lift from the interviews, the obviuos dillusional recollection of individuals that have, in my opinion, given individuals such as yourself the license to dismiss the degradation that was so painfully obvious. My brother died in the backseat of a police officers car, his guts no more than a mangled mass, his clothing drenched with liters of blood, and yet you feel comfortable saying that they stopped responding because of me and my family. Typical dissmisive white america…lacking humanity, compassion, and empathy. There are racist white woman in this film who reflect the same sentiment as yourself. Did we watch the same film?
Mr. King, thank you for providing your viewpoint both in the documentary and in your comment. I’m sorry if I suggested that residents like you and your family are the reason law enforcement officers stopped responding to calls from Pruitt-Igoe; that wasn’t my intention at all, and I was moved to tears by your story. Clearly Pruitt-Igoe was made up of many individuals who reacted to a horrific situation in different ways – I wouldn’t want to suggest otherwise. I didn’t indicate it well in the review, and my comments now will sound like backtracking, I know, but I wish Mr. Freidrichs had included more stories like yours. The reason I didn’t highlight it more strongly in the review is simply because growing up as a white child in St. Louis in the ’80s and ’90s, even though I didn’t hear much about Pruitt-Igoe at all, what I did hear was universally negative, as a place you simply Didn’t.Go.Near, so I found the counterpoint of people who did have a positive experience there unusual. I don’t feel comfortable at all saying that police didn’t respond because of you or any other reason; in fact, I’m appalled by the condition that Pruitt-Igoe had already fallen to by the early ’60s, much less later on. It’s clear that the government promised something and didn’t deliver it – how much of that is because of intentional racial discrimination (which the film does say was part of it) and how much because the expected funding for the project wasn’t there I can’t say, because I’m not a researcher in this field. Responding to what is in this film, the answer seems to be both, though perhaps the film errs too far toward suggesting that the government was caught up in events beyond its control. As to the racist white women in the film, I believe they were all in archival interviews in the section about the way Pruitt-Igoe perpetuated the race line, and I was appalled by their statements. I’m sincerely humbled that you saw the same sentiments in my review, which certainly was not my intention. My intention was to point out the way the documentary intrigued me to look beyond the stories filtered down through my cultural experience of St. Louis and think about what we can learn for future urban housing developments and not make the same mistakes again, and I think that was also Freidrich’s intention.
I really want to see this documentary (screeners anyone?). I took architecture in university and loathe the whole Le Corbusier rhetoric that had no relation to human interests and which kick-started this whole pared down apartment blocks as aesthetic wonders bullshit.