Film: ‘The Pruitt-Igoe Myth’

As St. Louis and other American cities deindustrialized in the ’50s and ’60s, a national urban-renewal program tried to address the mass exodus of residents and businesses from urban centers. One solution was the 33-building, 11-story Pruitt-Igoe public-housing complex, built in 1954, and destroyed starting in 1972. Independent filmmaker and director Chad Freidrichs tells the story of this development and questions its status as a symbol of the failure of Modernist architecture and public-assistance programs in Pruitt-Igoe Myth: An Urban History. The 83-minute film, which tries to “implode the myth,” will be screening in New York City, Seattle, and other cities this fall. • pruitt-igoe.com