Pruitt-Igoe Housing Complex (1954-72) Social Sciences Essay

Pruitt-Igoe Housing Complex

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Pruitt-Igoe Housing Complex

Opened in 1954 and demolished in the 1970s, the Pruitt-Igoe Housing Complex has been termed as a structural failure, a policy failure, and also a societal failure. However, regardless of the name given, the national significance of the project cannot be denied. In a 1984 article, Katherine Bristol debunks the widely accepted myth that the project was an architectural failure. Rather, she shifts the blame to institutional and policy failures. The construction of the 33 buildings was informed by increased migration of black Americans into St. Louis and the growth of slums which the government thought was bad for the city’s economy. Katherine (1984) also writes that “like many other cities in the in the postwar era, St. Louis was experiencing a massive shift of predominantly white middle-class population towards the suburbs” (163). The low occupancy played a major role in the fall of the project. According to Katherine (1984), “this decline in occupancy directly impacted on St. Louis Housing Authority’s ability to maintain the project” (166). The mode of funding, as well as the various institutions that handled the policies regarding the project, can be blamed for the pace at which the buildings became uninhabitable. The failure of the project also comes across as a racial case since similar projects such as New York were successful