Economy
In Defense of Pruitt-Igoe
A new documentary explores an overlooked truth - that the infamous housing project was once a very good thing.
The oft-retold story of Pruitt-Igoe’s demise might not be true after all.
The project, created to solve St. Louis's rapid inner city decline, was demolished just 20 years after its development. Ever since, it has been universally derided. Postmodernists and New Urbanists blame the scale and banality of Minouru Yamasaki’s brick towers, proclaiming its demolition the death of modernism.