The Pruitt-Igoe Myth directly addresses the sweeping urban changes that took place in the years following the Second World War. At its broadest level, the film is a portrait of the “urban crisis” that beset many American cities – Saint Louis in particular – with physical blight, disinvestment, population collapse and racial tension.

On a smaller scale, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth details the response of individuals to these larger forces. As the film’s narration states, “In the post-War years, the American city changed in ways that made it unrecognizable from a generation earlier, privileging some and leaving others in its wake.” The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, at its deepest level, is about these changes and how they have impacted the cities Americans inhabit.

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The initial catalyst behind The Pruitt-Igoe Myth was an architectural one. Director Chad Freidrichs first discovered and approached Pruitt-Igoe as the infamous “failure of Modern architecture.” Over time, the focus shifted in an attempt to contextualize the housing project, to view architecture and design as one piece of a larger picture.

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth penetrates the veil of symbolism and mystique, presenting the complex story behind an architectural icon and prompting dialogue about the purposes and possibilities of architecture and urban design.

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Pruitt-Igoe is situated at the intersection of public social policy and changing conditions in the American city. The famous Pruitt-Igoe implosion footage often has been used in political debates about the merits and feasibility of government sponsored housing in particular, and large social welfare programs in general.

From the massive Northern influx of new migrants from the South to attempts to provide decent housing for America’s impoverished city dwellers, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth outlines the conditions that led to the United States public housing program. While the above factors are well-known, other interests played a major role in shaping federal legislation: slum clearance efforts at the behest of downtown business interests, attempts to stimulate the construction industry and political charges of socialist infringement on the private housing market. The priorities and assumptions encoded into legislation and public policy deeply affected conditions at Pruitt-Igoe and public housing projects across the country.

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth tackles these, and other, policy issues head-on in an attempt to illustrate the enormous impact of government on the shape of American cities.

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Race and class are at the very heart of the Pruitt-Igoe story. By the early 1960s, less than a decade after opening, Pruitt-Igoe’s population was entirely African-American, largely poor, with a high percentage of single-parent families.

These conditions prompted Washington University’s vaunted sociology department to begin an extensive study of life in the projects. Joyce Ladner, author of the seminal Tomorrow’s Tomorrow, was charged with studying the lives of women and girls in Pruitt-Igoe. Dr. Ladner and several of the project’s residents (an often-overlooked perspective) share their experiences, presenting a re-examination of life in the projects. The film attempts to confront the stigmatizing and scapegoating of the urban poor that has dominated much of the discussion surrounding Pruitt-Igoe.

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