Pruitt-Igoe

Out of Blood (and Money)

Update: All eighty employees were terminated at the end of February. The hospital surrendered its licenses and will not reopen. Absolutely no one was surprised that the new three bed hospital opened by Paul McKee failed only a short time after it opened, and years, I mean years after it was first proposed. Property taxes,…

The Wall, Back from the Dead

Update: Here is a piece written by a resident of the Ville neighborhood explaining why the name Homer G. Phillips is so sacred to African Americans in St. Louis. The wall was taken down by construction workers in late 2020. Remember the preposterous wall that was knocked over in high winds on the site of…

Northside Wall, Former Pruit-Igoe Site

Update: The walls were blown over by strong winds on December 27, 2018. It has now been replaced by another wall made of insulation, and after the building permits for the first hospital expired, the Board of Aldermen approved similar tax incentives. They’re supposed to be building a three-bed urgent care hospital on the newly…

Pruitt School, Near North Side

Update: This school closed as part of SLPS in 2010, but reopened as a charter school. As was pointed out recently, some of the Pruitt-Igoe housing projects still exists. Besides the power substation, the Pruitt School, an elegant building of brick and marble, still stands and is in use. The school must have fit in…

Power Substation, Pruitt-Igoe

Update: All of the trees and underbrush were cleared by Northside in 2017 for a supposed three-bed hospital. This is the power substation that still serves the area just around Cass Avenue, and at one point served the Pruitt-Igoe housing project. It’s actually an interesting little building, with great detailing in the bars covering the…

Pruitt-Igoe Nature Preserve, Revisited

Update: All of the trees and underbrush were cleared by Northside in 2017 for a three-bed hospital. I’m not sure what the plan is for the Pruitt-Igoe site, other than there the plan is to have no plan. While tentatively part of the Northside development, there has been little movement on that project, so the…

Pruitt-Igoe Nature Preserve

Update: All of the trees and underbrush were cleared by Northside in 2017 for a three-bed hospital. Wow, the old Pruitt-Igoe site is looking really lush this time of year! I can’t wait to see what exciting new development will be occurring on the site soon!

Update: All of the trees and underbrush were cleared from the Pruitt-Igoe site by Northside in 2017 for a three-bed hospital.. Many St. Louisans don’t realize that one of the most infamous housing projects in the country, Pruitt-Igoe, lies just to the northwest of downtown St. Louis in what was once the center of African-American…