Gathering the testimony of former residents, urban studies, scholars and archival footage, Freidrichs doesn’t dispute the myriad problems that led to Pruitt-Igoe’s undoing but provides a more nuanced understanding of what its failure came to represent: government programs don’t work. The film describes the confluence of factors that doomed these federally funded high-rises, a facet of the post-war plan meant to stimulate the economy of downtown business by ridding cities of their aging slums. With the help of a few key pieces of local and federal legislation—-including the American Housing Act of 1949, which heavily contributed to white flight to the suburbs—-Pruitt-Igoe was propped up as a self-congratulatory symbol of progress but was quickly undone by adherence to rigid bureaucracy (no able-bodied men were allowed to live in the building) and budgetary neglect.
As the middle-class left St. Louis en masse, the degradation of Pruitt-Igoe came to reinforce the worst fears of desegregation and welfare. Without enough resources, the buildings fell into disrepair; old television clips illustrate its gradual transformation from hopeful initiative to brick-and-mortar boogeyman. But that isn’t the whole story. Former residents fondly recall the “poor man’s penthouse” that once embodied their dreams of upward mobility. These first-hand accounts save The Pruitt-Igoe Myth from the film’s occasionally didactic, hyper-localized tone, stripping away the symbolism to reveal the affection, disappointment and anger of the people who lived through an infamous failed social experiment. For some, the destruction proved a point; for the people of St. Louis, it remains a blemished piece of history from which many have yet to recover.
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is now playing at The West End Cinema, 2301 M Street NW. $9-11. (202) 419-3456.