St. Louis: Pruitt-Igoe Massive Housing Projects Documentary.

[Lucky7s]

HERE IS THE FULL DOCUMENTARY:
http://video.pbs.org/video/2365165946/

I don't remember how to embed a video...this shit is sad and sickening.

If you get a chance to watch the full documentary on "America Reframed"...please do.

It pretty much explains why the large cities should have never invested in these types of high rise buildings...you know shit had to be bad when niggas running FROM free rent and it was only up 20 years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7RwwkNzF68

Published on Sep 22, 2013
It began as a housing marvel. Built in 1956, Pruitt-Igoe was heralded as the model public housing project of the future, "the poor man's penthouse."

Two decades later, it ended in rubble - its razing an iconic event that the architectural theorist Charles Jencks famously called "the death of modernism." The footage and images of its implosion have helped to perpetuate a myth of failure, a failure that has been used to critique Modernist architecture, attack public assistance programs, and stigmatize public housing residents.

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth seeks to set the historical record straight. To examine the interests involved in Pruitt-Igoe's creation. To re-evaluate the rumors and the stigma. To implode the myth. . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuY45MfDclY




Some highlights


-Married women were told the husbands had to leave the entire state of Missouri if the family needed housing


-White men would check the units for 12 hours all night spot checking to see if men were in there


-The Welfare Department said no TVs were allowed


-They were built in 1956 and demolished by 1975, went from 12,000 families to 2400 or so


-No heat, sewer problems, no trash pickup, mold and mildew, all kinds of shit for 20 years

 

[big enos burrnet]

damm that joint was a mess..@ the 5:50 mark i dont blame her for saying quit trying to fix the problem and start the evacuation process..

 

[Lucky7s]

In all my days in the South, I have NEVER heard of a housing project being demolished after 20 years...that shit is unheard of.

The projects didn't start getting torn down until the 1990s at the earliest.


Shit, Katrina was the only reason they went down in New Orleans...the Iberville was built in the 1940s and is still standing behind the French Quarters...granted, they are only about 2-3 stories tall but damn a 10 story project up in smoke?


What a wasted investment of federal funds...

 

[big enos burrnet]

yeah that joint went from sugar to shit quick..

 

[egatsby]

Saw this doc it's pretty good

 

[Lucky7s]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4wxRb09ZEc

Uploaded on Feb 13, 2012
A screening of the documentary film The Pruitt-Igoe Myth followed by a conversation between Catherine Fennell, Columbia University Anthropology, and Reinhold Martin, GSAPP.

Organized by The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture

 

[Lucky7s]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4wxRb09ZEc

Uploaded on Feb 13, 2012
A screening of the documentary film The Pruitt-Igoe Myth followed by a conversation between Catherine Fennell, Columbia University Anthropology, and Reinhold Martin, GSAPP.

Organized by The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture

You would have thought other cities would have learned from this shit...high rises and negroes do NOT mix.

 

[Lucky7s]

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Why the Pruitt-Igoe housing project failed

</hgroup><aside class="floatleft light-grey" style="float: left; color: rgb(123, 123, 115); font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 17.714284896850586px; line-height: 27.5px; margin: 0px 15px 10px 0px !important;"><time class="date-created" style="font-size: 1.2rem; line-height: 1.6rem;">Oct 15th 2011, 18:24</time> by J.S. | NEW YORK</aside>

THE filmmakers behind “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth” confronted a formidable task: to strip away the layers of a narrative so familiar that even they themselves believed it when they first set out to make their documentary. Erected in St Louis, Missouri, in the early 1950s, at a time of postwar prosperity and optimism, the massive Pruitt-Igoe housing project soon became a notorious symbol of failed public policy and architectural hubris, its 33 towers razed a mere two decades later. Such symbolism found its most immediate expression in the iconic image of an imploding building, the first of Pruitt-Igoe's towers to be demolished in 1972 (it was featured in the cult film Koyaanisqatsi, with Philip Glass's score murmuring in the background). The spectacle was as powerful politically as it was visually, locating the failure of Pruitt-Igoe within the buildings themselves—in their design and in their mission.

The scale of the project made it conspicuous from the get-go: 33 buildings, 11-storeys each, arranged across a sprawling, 57 acres in the poor DeSoto-Carr neighbourhood on the north side of St Louis. The complex was supposed to put the modernist ideals of Le Corbusier into action; at the time, Architectural Forum ran a story praising the plan to replace “ramshackle houses jammed with people—and rats” in the city's downtown with “vertical neighbourhoods for poor people.” The main architect was Minoru Yamasaki, who would go on to design another monument to modernism that would also be destroyed, but for very different reasons, and under very different circumstances: his World Trade Centre went up in the early 1970s, right around the time that Pruitt-Igoe was pulled down.

The promise of Pruitt-Igoe's early years was swiftly overtaken by a grim reality. Occupancy peaked at 91% in 1957, and from there began its precipitous decline. By the late 1960s the buildings had been denuded of its residents, the number of windows broken to the point where it was possible to see straight through to the other side. The residents that remained had to act tough for the chance to come and go unmolested. Critics of modernist architecture were quick to seize on the design of the buildings, arguing that such forward-thinking features as skip-stop elevators, which stopped only at the first, fourth, seventh and tenth floors, were wholly unsuitable and ultimately dangerous. Designed to encourage residents to mingle in the long galleries and staircases, the elevators instead created perfect opportunities for muggings. Charles Jencks, an architectural theorist, declared July 15th 1972, when Pruitt-Igoe was “given the final coup de grâce by dynamite”, the day that “Modern Architecture died”.

Directed by Chad Freidrichs and currently travelling the American film-festival circuit, “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth” complicates that picture by considering the larger context. The city of St Louis was undergoing its own postwar transformations, to which a project such as Pruitt-Igoe was particularly vulnerable. The city's industrial base was moving elsewhere, as were its residents: over a short period of 30 years, the population of St Louis had shrivelled to a mere 50% of its postwar highs. The Housing Act of 1949 encouraged contradictory policies, offering incentives for urban renewal projects as well as subsidies for moving to the suburbs. Federal money flowed into the construction of the projects, but the maintenance fees were to come from the tenants' rents; the declining occupancy rate set off a vicious circle, and money that was dearly needed for safety and upkeep simply wasn't there.

Abstract policy decisions and large-scale economic changes are difficult to render compelling, no matter the medium, but this documentary succeeds in finding the drama. Original footage from Pruitt-Igoe's early days, including a promotional reel replete with a buoyant, 1950s-era voiceover and cheerful primary colours, runs up against desolate photographs of the project's decline. The film also features interviews with several former residents of Pruitt-Igoe, who convey their hopefulness when they first moved in, as well as an affection for the buildings that for many of them persists to this day.

In their eagerness to challenge the Pruitt-Igoe myth, the filmmakers verge on suggesting that the design of the buildings had nothing at all to do with the failure that ensued. But critics of High Modernism can point to the counter-example of Carr Square Village, a low-rise housing project built in 1942 across the street, which didn't suffer from Pruitt-Igoe's escalating rates of vacancy and crime. Clearly many factors—economic, demographic, political and, arguably, architectural—converged on Pruitt-Igoe.

“The Pruitt-Igoe Myth” owes much to earlier academic work that exposed the seams in the dominant consensus. This eight-page paper by Katharine Bristol, published in the Journal of Architectural Education in 1991, offers more analytical rigour than could be captured in an 84-minute film. The difference, of course, is that the documentary carries a more visceral punch, which gives it the potential to reach the kind of wider audience that Ms Bristol's 20-year-old scholarly paper never had. In order to unseat a powerful narrative about the failure of modern architecture and public housing, the filmmakers have offered a powerful narrative of their own.

 

[militantmidget]

Thanks. Will check this out when I get a chance.

 

[donhustle]

They never built anything on the land looks like a haunted graveyard

 

[2Klub]

Might as well call it a graveyard. It is gated and overgrown.

*conspiracy alert: I've heard about how the government would spray chemicals in the air over Pruitt Igoe for some type of social control experiment.

 

[2Klub]

Might as well call it a graveyard. It is gated and overgrown.

*conspiracy alert: I've heard about how the government would spray chemicals in the air over Pruitt Igoe for some type of social control experiment.

 

[prospect]

Subbed for later

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk 4

 

[BDR]

Just watched, I felt that shit in my soul from those who lived there. Pruitt Igoe ain't no different than any other housing projects past and present..

I grew up in the south Bronx in the fuckin 80s in the Pjs. Shit aint cool when you got bitch ass niggas like Dre from the 14th setting pissy mattresses on fire in the staircase exit. Or that nigga Larry throwing rocks off the roof.

How bout the elevators not working for damn near a year and everyday you got to walk up 20 stories or housing sutting off the water and mofos got to go outside with buckets and get water from the fire hydrant , pissy elevators. Pissy stairs, Chics getting raped on the roof, had a nigga called the hammer man running around back then. I mean all types of wild shit back then.

Glad moms got us up out of that shit and never looked back.. Fuck the projects,, so glad I'm blessed to own my own home and my lil ones don't have to live in that shit I grew up in...

 

[Ziongate]

I need to come back to this one at a later day.

 

[Joe Money]

How bout the elevators not working for damn near a year and everyday you got to walk up 20 stories or housing sutting off the water and mofos got to go outside with buckets and get water from the fire hydrant , pissy elevators. Pissy stairs, Chics getting raped on the roof, had a nigga called the hammer man running around back then. I mean all types of wild shit back then.

A serial rapist called the Hammer Man?

 

[brickwall92]

will watch

 

[Black_Hand]

Just watched, I felt that shit in my soul from those who lived there. Pruitt Igoe ain't no different than any other housing projects past and present..

I grew up in the south Bronx in the fuckin 80s in the Pjs. Shit aint cool when you got bitch ass niggas like Dre from the 14th setting pissy mattresses on fire in the staircase exit. Or that nigga Larry throwing rocks off the roof.

How bout the elevators not working for damn near a year and everyday you got to walk up 20 stories or housing sutting off the water and mofos got to go outside with buckets and get water from the fire hydrant , pissy elevators. Pissy stairs, Chics getting raped on the roof, had a nigga called the hammer man running around back then. I mean all types of wild shit back then.

Glad moms got us up out of that shit and never looked back.. Fuck the projects,, so glad I'm blessed to own my own home and my lil ones don't have to live in that shit I grew up in...

hammer man raping bitches on the roof?

 

[Lucky7s]

Might as well call it a graveyard. It is gated and overgrown.

*conspiracy alert: I've heard about how the government would spray chemicals in the air over Pruitt Igoe for some type of social control experiment.

It ain't no conspiracy if it is true..


I've read about that here and there since the internet has been up 20 years...I had no idea it was allegedly the Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis. I just always read St. Louis in general back in the 50s, 60s.


It has been declassified and confirmed since 1994...on top of that, the first known AIDS patient was a 15 year old black kid that died in the late 60s in St. Louis...and bruh...just read the links.


See the last post about the shit they sprayed in San Francisco in the 70s and people showed up with rare urinary infections, pneumonias and flus. Doesn't end stage AIDS cause pneumonia? Wasn't San Francisco a hotspot for AIDS in the 80s?


Follow the out-migration patterns of the black people from St. Louis who mostly came up from Mississippi's poorest counties...and notice the high numbers of AIDS cases in the Delta region...they took that shit back down South with them. St. Louis full of negroes with Mississippi roots...they came up on boats back in the pre-automobile era...makes sense to go back down South and visit or stay if shit in da Lou didn't work out.


https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forum...y-sprayed-st-Louis-pruit-igoe-housing-project




http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/...cle_c7be3f5c-c2df-5cc4-91eb-70386fb37250.html




http://gradworks.umi.com/35/15/3515886.html
Abstract:


This piece analyzes a covert Manhattan Project spin-off organization referred to here as the Manhattan-Rochester Coalition, and an obscure aerosol study in St. Louis, Missouri, conducted under contract by the U.S. military from 1953–1954, and 1963–1965. The military-sponsored studies targeted a segregated, high-density urban area, where low-income persons of color predominantly resided. Examination of the Manhattan-Rochester Coalition and the St. Louis aerosol studies, reveal their connections to each other, and to a much larger military project that secretly tested humans, both alive and deceased, in an effort to understand the effects of weaponized radiation.

 

[melonpecan]

Is the doc up anywhere else? PBS took it own a few days ago.

 

[Lord T]

Very interesting drop Lucky7s, very much appreciated fam. Man that is sad, some heavy stuff dropped in here

I always trip off of these other cities that have these hi-rise projects. Our projects here (the ones still standing) are just 2-3 stories tall, but they may cover about 4 blocks or more. We spread it out instead of building them straight up.

 

[Lucky7s]

Is the doc up anywhere else? PBS took it own a few days ago.

Check to see if it will replay on local PBS. I wish I knew how to download it when I had a chance. That shit was super depressing...I don't have fam up that way so I had never heard of it like the Robert Taylor and Cabrini Green.

Very interesting drop Lucky7s, very much appreciated fam. Man that is sad, some heavy stuff dropped in here

I always trip off of these other cities that have these hi-rise projects. Our projects here (the ones still standing) are just 2-3 stories tall, but they may cover about 4 blocks or more. We spread it out instead of building them straight up.

Shit, I'm so glad my grandparents didn't migrate up to the midwest and the north. Some of their siblings migrated to California and did well after WW2.


The baby boomers that were raised up there are migrating back down South... for jobs...oh the irony,


America is funny.

 

[freshnclean]

When PBS takes down documentaries,you know shit is real..

Its called the "Projects" for a reason..

I always trip off of these other cities that have these hi-rise projects. Our projects here (the ones still standing) are just 2-3 stories tall, but they may cover about 4 blocks or more. We spread it out instead of building them straight up.

Alot of that is based off of geographic accessibility (and other factors as well.) For example, areas that are overpopulated (NYC, etc) have no choice but to design them like that. Areas with more space can spread out. I really cant speak on the area in St. Louis though, because I never been

 

[BDR]

It's on Netflix

 

[BDR]

A serial rapist called the Hammer Man?

hammer man raping bitches on the roof?

Dead ass, nigga would hit Chics in the head with a hammer, rape them and he threw 2 Chics off the roof.

This was back in 86 south Bronx

 

[Lord T]

Alot of that is based off of geographic accessibility (and other factors as well.) For example, areas that are overpopulated (NYC, etc) have no choice but to design them like that. Areas with more space can spread out. I really cant speak on the area in St. Louis though, because I never been

I see what you mean. Makes sense

 

[Lucky7s]

Dead ass, nigga would hit Chics in the head with a hammer, rape them and he threw 2 Chics off the roof.

This was back in 86 south Bronx

And y'all fucking STAYED?


I woulda begged Ma duke to get us on the first Amtrak smokin' out that hell hole.


What was the appeal of living on top of niggas in pissy hallways like that?


I had cousins in the 2 and 3 story projects in the South and I mean, people had some kinda pride in where they lived and kept shit decent.


A nigga raping chicks or fuckin' with lil' kids came up missing on in da canals with his dick cut off. No lie.

 

[Lord T]

Check to see if it will replay on local PBS. I wish I knew how to download it when I had a chance. That shit was super depressing...I don't have fam up that way so I had never heard of it like the Robert Taylor and Cabrini Green.

Cabrini Green was some infamous shit! One of my best friend's is from Chicago (he first moved down here to go to Tennesse State University) and he told me numerous stories about Cabrini Green.

My girl is from Detroit and she was telling me about the Brewster Housing projects too

 

[Lord T]

It's on Netflix

Thanks BDR!

 

[Lucky7s]

Cabrini Green was some infamous shit! One of my best friend's is from Chicago (he first moved down here to go to Tennesse State University) and he told me numerous stories about Cabrini Green.

My girl is from Detroit and she was telling me about the Brewster Housing projects too

Candyman the movie ain't help Cabrini's rep...my uncle and his wife moved up to Detroit but I doubt they lived in the Brewster...some famous people came out that mofo when it was clean in the 50s.


I mean from what I can tell, them negroes that migrated was worse for wear for 2-3 generations...and they like to shit on their cousins down South...


Mississippi still has the largest percentage of black home owners in the country...per capita.


Imagine what black home ownership would be if they had stayed and worked the land they owned for profit to send the next generation off to college.


The great migration only really worked for the blacks who were doing well in the first place, they got better education and jobs if they were middle class minded in the 30s-50s.


The rest went up there poor and stayed poor.

 

[BDR]

And y'all fucking STAYED?


I woulda begged Ma duke to get us on the first Amtrak smokin' out that hell hole.


What was the appeal of living on top of niggas in pissy hallways like that?


I had cousins in the 2 and 3 story projects in the South and I mean, people had some kinda pride in where they lived and kept shit decent.


A nigga raping chicks or fuckin' with lil' kids came up missing on in da canals with his dick cut off. No lie.

Fam when your money ain't right there isn't much you can do.. You have to ride that shit out, my moms did good tho she saved up, bought her house back in 1990 and we never looked back

 

[Lucky7s]

Fam when your money ain't right there isn't much you can do.. You have to ride that shit out, my moms did good tho she saved up, bought her house back in 1990 and we never looked back

I guess growing up in a black middle class utopia like Atlanta has me jaded like a mug...small city Southern projects were tolerable compared to y'all up North shit.


I didn't mean to sound like I was judging, because I know money is a factor but in many cases pride is a factor, people didn't want to admit defeat and come back down South to their roots or whomever was left that had room. The big city ain't for everybody...


And I mean can you elaborate on the state of public housing in NYC in the last 25 years?


I keep hearing y'all rant about gentrification and shit...where are them project dwellers supposed to go when y'all got a shortage?

 

[Lord T]

Candyman the movie ain't help Cabrini's rep...my uncle and his wife moved up to Detroit but I doubt they lived in the Brewster...some famous people came out that mofo when it was clean in the 50s.


I mean from what I can tell, them negroes that migrated was worse for wear for 2-3 generations...and they like to shit on their cousins down South...


Mississippi still has the largest percentage of black home owners in the country...per capita.


Imagine what black home ownership would be if they had stayed and worked the land they owned for profit to send the next generation off to college.


The great migration only really worked for the blacks who were doing well in the first place, they got better education and jobs if they were middle class minded in the 30s-50s.


The rest went up there poor and stayed poor.

Good points!

Didn't know that tidbit about Mississippi's percentage of black home owners. Everytime Mississippi is mentioned it's to say that it is the lowest educated state, the poorest state, or that it has the highest obesity rate in the country.

True, some very famous people came from the Brewster Homes in Detroit

The Robert Taylor homes were fucked too

Composed of 24 16-story high-rises and a total of 4,415 units, the Robert Taylor Homes were once home to Mr. T, athletes Kirby Puckett and Maurice Cheeks, and the current governor of the state of Massachusetts Deval Patrick.

During its time, the Robert Taylor homes housed some of the poorest residents in the country. A 1999 article reported that 95 percent of the housing development’s 20,000 residents were unemployed and listed public assistance as their only income source. With such poverty, the Robert Taylor Homes recorded some of the highest rates of violent crime and gang activity in Chicago.

 

[Lord T]

I keep hearing y'all rant about gentrification and shit...where are them project dwellers supposed to go when y'all got a shortage?

This is where they go. You can watch the whole clip, but mostly starting at the 4:20 mark show how they spread out

 

[BDR]

I guess growing up in a black middle class utopia like Atlanta has me jaded like a mug...small city Southern projects were tolerable compared to y'all up North shit.


I didn't mean to sound like I was judging, because I know money is a factor but in many cases pride is a factor, people didn't want to admit defeat and come back down South to their roots or whomever was left that had room. The big city ain't for everybody...


And I mean can you elaborate on the state of public housing in NYC in the last 25 years?


I keep hearing y'all rant about gentrification and shit...where are them project dwellers supposed to go when y'all got a shortage?

Mofos in NYC projects live like kings compared to other parts of the country.

NYC has a bigger tax base to part of your taxes go to NYC public housing or the up keep plus they get federal grands from the gov...