The PRUITT-IGOE MYTH
In 1977 Charles Jencks, architectural historian cites the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe as the death of Modernism. Jencks blamed architecture for the failure instead of the real culprit: the St. Louis Housing Authority. The project worked when it was white and when forced to integrate, they abandoned the urban utopia, en masse, for a “whites only” suburban complex provided by the very same Authority.
Jencks neglected to mention that maintenance left with white flight and no housing type can exist for long without proper maintenance. The inference was that the European model was too advanced for black Americans, said to be a stoop culture; it was tantamount to casting pearls to swine. Architectural schools accepted it as fact.
Furthermore, the egalitarian ideas imbedded in Pruitt-Igoe were too good for black Americans to inherit, slumlords had to nip it in the bud. Innovations such as wide skyways and generous active stairwells, skip-stop elevators, laundry rooms, trash disposal chutes, recreation facilities, garden amenities and commerce essential to success. It was demolished for spite.
Corbusier and a Movement took the fall for a housing administration bent on revenge for the 1954 civil rights mandate to integrate. Missouri is famous for the dreadful Dred Scott Decision, and the northernmost Dixie state with segregation laws outlawed by Brown v. Board of Education on May 7th, 1954.
Pruitt/Igoe, the movie, featured nostalgic recall of former residents reminiscing about what could have been. They could not bring themselves to integrate the names, to them, it’s Pruitt and Igoe. Wendell Pruitt (1920-45) was a Tuskegee Airman and William Igoe (1879-1953) was just local white politician. It would’ve been nice if the gesture came to reflect the community but Igoe was always window-dressing only.
The movie showed a vignette of a white resident in a rant about living with blacks…the intense hate revealed she was a victim too. The introduction was too sudden for closed minds. And when a black resident recalled one of her happiest memories was playing loud music in the corridor to celebrate her move into the complex, it was evident culture shock played a part.
Still, one is left to wonder why a community of 12,000 residents under extreme duress could not muster the votes to affect any positive change? Where was the Church during all of this? Pruitt-Igoe was structurally sound and ahead of its time – but clergy never are. They tell the congregation that God doesn’t give you more that you can bear…and lead them into song. That has to make you feel inferior.
They may not be equal in God’s eyes, nonetheless, they are American, where all are equal. The officials who chose destruction over renovation were not concerned with public good as much as with upholding racist policies. Jencks, knew all along that Americans come in all colors and traditions, stoop culture notwithstanding…but he was white and made to feel superior.