Publication Date
2007
Document Type
Article
Volume
2
Issue
1
First Page
22
Last Page
27
Summary
As a child, Michael Willis lived in the Pruitt-Igoe public housing development, a cluster of 33 St. Louis high-rises that became national symbols of poor social planning. Elevators stopped on every other floor; there were few services nearby for families or recreational facilities for children. Not surprisingly, Pruitt-Igoe deteriorated, its corridors infested with crime, and was finally demolished in the mid-1970s, with the first buildings famously dynamited in 1972. Michael was there as an observer when he was a Washington University architecture student.