The former Pruitt Igoe on Google Earth

[Centropolis]

it would have been nice if one or two fewer expressways had been built with a scattering of residential low/ mid rises (not just in the central corridor) and the subways were built as planned. it would look like a lost eastern Canadian city, or something. the physical damage could have been even worse i suppose...there's still another half of the city that is workable.

[KevinFromTexas]

I thought I'd mention that Netflix has a documentary on Pruitt Igoe called "The Pruitt-Igoe Myth"

The Youtube clip that MolsonExport posted earlier in this thread is the trailer to it.

[Doug]

Was it replanted as forest or did that happen naturally?

[Centropolis]

au naturel.

[alchemist redux]

To me, St. Louis was always the "American Dresden" - the biggest collective architectural loss of the urban renewal period.

It's not just the wanton destruction of practically the entire northern half of the city, it's also the desecration of the old Port, which would be one of the liveliest, densest quarters on the Mississippi - who knows? It could've rivaled the French Quarter - and the obliteration of so much of downtown to build the Gateway mall.

[photoLith]

Yes, the destruction of the old port part of the city was also a complete disaster. It was almost as old and historic as the French Quarter and a lot denser then it too. It would have been an amazing hood today, probably extremely pricey and lively. But no, instead some retards in the 40s-50s thought it was just a fucking dandy idea to destroy one of Americas most historic river front neighborhoods. What is left in St. Louis today is just a shadow of its former self.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_St._Louis
Before


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_St._Louis
Fucking after

All that remains of that former neighborhood is the lone church visible in the last photo.

[Centropolis]

i've had a few stiff drinks over it.


http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2610/4135683924_ecd080622f_z.jpg


anywho...

Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas

Did you see that population sign in the video? 800,000+ in St. Louis at the time. Isn't St. Louis around 400K now? It's half the city it was then. I don't mean that in any disparaging way either.

less than half. ~320K. luckily, though, St. Louis was also horribly overcrowded at it's peak (lots of tenements). otherwise the architectural loss would probably be worse. however, population decline has slowed significantly. maybe even ended (fingers crossed). All of the city's central neighborhoods (the ones with the highest walk-scores and best access to public transit) gained population as of the last census. many old 2- and 4- family buildings are being converted to single-families and town homes, and statistics show that the average income of city residents has increased. i don't think St. Louis needs to get back to 850K to be a healthy city. i think 600K would be perfect. if only we could figure out how to syphon some fraction of our continuously-slow-growing metro...

[SpawnOfVulcan]

I actually had to conduct a seminar a couple weeks ago that included a smaller section about projects like Pruitt Igoe. The way I put it, "instead of providing adequate housing for displaced people of lower income, they created densities of poverty that were havens for crime and poor living conditions." As my textbook puts it,"The oft-cited example of the failure of urban renewal is the Pruitt-Igoe high-rise apartment building in St. Louis, which won an urban design award and was torn down ten years later as unfit for human habitation." From When City and Country Collide, Daniels, 1999.

[Wooster]

Originally Posted by photoLith

Yes, the destruction of the old port part of the city was also a complete disaster. It was almost as old and historic as the French Quarter and a lot denser then it too. It would have been an amazing hood today, probably extremely pricey and lively. But no, instead some retards in the 40s-50s thought it was just a fucking dandy idea to destroy one of Americas most historic river front neighborhoods. What is left in St. Louis today is just a shadow of its former self.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_St._Louis
Before


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_St._Louis
Fucking after

All that remains of that former neighborhood is the lone church visible in the last photo.

Holy Fuck!

[giallo]

It's like looking at an extremely graphic photo of murder. Stomach-turning.

[MolsonExport]

Those responsible for this wanton destruction should be shot, drawn, and quartered.

There were powerful folk in Montreal that planned something similar for much of our older quarters in the 50s-70s. Thankfully, most "renewal" projects (abjects) were thwarted.

[photoLith]

^
No, they should be first tarred, then feathered. Then publicly humiliated after having their own homes torn down and all of their stuff burnt. After witnessing that they should then be eloctrocuted Green Mile fashion for their crimes against humanity.

[Centropolis]

then there is/was the mill creek valley (on the other side of the CBD from the former old quarter).

solid rowhouse quarter.




http://inlinethumb21.webshots.com/40084/2337983980099985809S600x600Q85.jpg


http://img49.imageshack.us/img49/9010/deterioratedhousing2vp2.jpg


http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6063/6098048804_f5a5404a92.jpg


http://gifsoup.com/view/363004/atom-bomb-o.gif

[photoLith]

Could you imagine if they would have done that to the New Orleans French Quarter? They almost did though and luckily the hippies and art people in New Orleans stopped it. During the 1960s some idiots tried to build an elevated highway going along the river cutting through the French Quarter.

And even worse, Robert Moses in NYC wanted to tear apart Manhattan and build a giant expressway network on it which would have destroyed SoHo and cut the island into segments. Glad that never happened, what a disaster that would have been.

Europe had its great cities destroyed by war and today they are rebuilding what once was, for instance in Dresden and Warsaw. But here in America, we destroyed our great cities voluntarily and we still arent rebuilding what was lost, and in some cases still destroying much today.

[Centropolis]

the problem with st. louis was that it's economy was relatively in decline in the early twentieth century even while detroit and the rest of the rust belt was booming. leaders thought they were being progressive by implementing these extreme urban renewal schemes - the city was absolutely desperate to hold to it's status as a respectible city say, familar to the lips of people in new york (even though st. louis had a larger population than boston...didn't have the prestige or money). st. louis was also extremely dirty from burning gobs of dirt cheap southern illinois and st. louis coal (you could dig it up in your back yard). looking back on the old photos, it looks filthier than even detroit or cleveland, so there was a dirty patina on everything - which made it look more run down than it was and served to make the wrecking ball easier.

sometimes i wonder if st. louis serves as a lesson/future for all interior boomtowns. in some ways we are lucky because there is still some decent stuff left - so long as you don't fret over the fact that it was once a top 4 US city. all cities have archs to their history, that arch seems to be sometimes a little more harsh for most non coastal cities that boomed hard.

i think new orleans was lucky in that it wasn't as uptight about things like appearances or prestige. st. louis thought it was boston in a dirty dress...and was a little bit.

[Don B.]

St. Louis declined from 856,000 to about 320,000 in 60+ years. I believe that today, the population of St. Louis is about the same as it was in 1875.

I don't believe there is any example of a greater population loss of a westernized city not caused by war or famine in all of recorded history.

Kansas City (my former hometown) also had massive population loss. KC's only saving grace was it was able to annex a number of suburbs, as KC's land area increased from about 50 square miles in 1950 to 316 square miles by 1980. Had KC not been able to annex, her population would have declined from about 456,000 in 1950 to 180,000 or 190,000 today. Percentage-wise it would have been about the same loss as St. Louis, give or take.

I remember KC's inner city (where I grew up) starting from around 1975 to 1993 when I moved to Phoenix. Much of the carnage had already been done in the 1950s and 1960s, but there was much more destruction to be had as whites fled the inner city in droves. The 1970s were not kind to KC.

--don

[Centropolis]

kansas city is interesting, in that it's experiences sort of echoed st. louis in a way a little later (without as many extremes). i'm familiar with those great old pre-expressway loop photos of a robust 1940s downtown kansas city. classic, massively underappreciated robust noir-y downtown - one of my favorite early/mid twentieth century downtowns.


http://shs.umsystem.edu/historicmissourians/name/p/peters/images/gallery1/shs003200.jpg

[SignalHillHiker]

Well, now I'm sad for St. Louis. I can't believe they destroyed their old town.

I'm so grateful, now, that our heritage protection laws are so strict. It sucks that the city can tell you exactly what dimensions, style and colour your bay window has to be, but at least we still have old town.

[MolsonExport]

Apparently by 2044, Kansas City will have a smorgasbord of supertalls. See "Looper"


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