The United States Housing Act of 1949 made funds directly available to cities for slum clearance, urban redevelopment, and public housing. Like many other cities in the postwar era, St. Louis was experiencing a massive shift of its predominantly white-middle class population towards the suburbs. At the same time, central city slums were expanding as poor households moved into units abandoned by those leaving the city. By 1950, St. Louis received a federal commitment under the Act to finance 5,800 public housing units: Cochran Gardens, Vaughn, Darst-Webbe, and, most famously, Pruitt-Igoe.

Using images from the State Historical Society of Missouri and the Missouri Historical Society and articles from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, this book juxtaposes the rise of St. Louis’ idyllic planned communities with the rise and swift decline of Pruitt-Igoe, one of the most notorious and largest public housing developments in the country. Katharine Bristol’s 1991 essay, “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth,” which argues that the violent social and physical collapse within the development was due to external social forces, not the demographic composition of the residents, concludes the book.

Read essay here.