The United States Housing Act of 1949 provided the federal moneys for urban redevelopment and slum
               removal that led to the design of Pruitt-Igoe by architect Minoru Yamasaki of the firm Leinweber, Yamasaki &
               Hellmuth. The housing project, located on a 57 acre site, consisted of 33 eleven-story, flat-topped apartment
               blocks sited to incorporate Le Corbusier's "three essential joys of urbanism: sun, space, and greenery."
               Pruitt-Igoe was meant to be surrounded by a "river of trees" winding through the open spaces and connecting
               the project to the surrounding neighborhoods, as Yamasaki told Architectural Forum in 1951. The almost
               brutally spare, unadorned surfaces were to reflect the dissolution of the old hierarchies that made luxuriously
               superfluous decoration a demarcator of wealth. The repetition of apartment after apartment opening to "streets
               in the air" where tenants and their children would be safe from traffic was said to be modeled on the metaphor
               of the hospital—a safe, hygienic, and healthful environment (Russell 23).
               In early discussions of the project, like the one in Architectural Forum, features like open galleries and
               skip-stop elevators were hailed as "patentable" innovations that would help create "neighborhoods," even in
               the highest density public housing ever built in the U.S. The 12,000 inhabitants housed within a few city
               blocks created a small city within the larger city. Galleries were envisioned as places for children to play,
               mothers to meet for conversation and laundry, and places to store items such as bicycles. The early drawings
               depict middle-class white women strolling in plant-filled, sunlit galleries pushing baby carriages.
               By making the text of Pruitt-Igoe read clean, safe, and democratic, Yamasaki desired to instill those same
               qualities in the housing project's inhabitants. Galleries, open horizontal space every third floor, 11 x 85' and
               oriented south, created spaces for neighborhood-like interaction among tenants, while skip-stop elevators,
               elevators stopping only at gallery floors, (and requiring tenants to walk up or down stairs to their apartments),
               assured that the gallery space would be used. In addition, laundry and open air drying facilities were also
               placed on gallery levels, as was space for storage. The design called for screening along the galleries to allow
               for "summer breezes," but shutters to "block winter winds" ("Slum Surgery" 131). Such a space was meant to
               encourage interaction among tenants, safe spaces for children and families, and clean, sunlit areas for
               recreation and neighborhood life.

               6As designed in 1951, the project was segregated, with 1/3 the housing meant for whites (Pruitt) and 2/3
               meant for African Americans (Igoe). However, before the project was finished, the Supreme Court handed
               down their decision ending segregation, which in practice (though not principal) guaranteed Pruitt-Igoe would
               house only African Americans, as whites could not be convinced to move into the project. Moneys for the
               project began to dry up immediately.6 Much of Yamasaki's design was altered based on a new lack of
               funds—his original design called for both the high-rises and garden apartments at a density of 30 per acre.
               Yamasaki explained that the housing authority forced him to double the density: "The best we could do," he
               said, "was to eliminate the low rise and add more slabs" (Bailey 23). In addition, as the population was
               increased, money for landscaping and any services (public spaces like gyms, playgrounds, a proposed
               grocery, even public bathrooms) disappeared. The only public structure left was a "community center" where
               housing authority offices were set up to collect rent and administrate the project. Architect Gyo Obata, who
               worked with Yamasaki, recalls that "[Yamasaki] tried and fought at every turn [for amenities]" (Bailey 23). The
               result though, was a housing project that represented to its tenants a system of powerful control because it
               encoded racist messages by isolating and containing a population that was 98% African-American. Not only
               did the tenants clearly decode very different meanings than the architects had hoped to encode, a claim that
               will be discussed in detail later in this paper, but in fewer than two decades architectural critics moved from
               hailing the structure's embodiment of democratic ideals to indicting it as a "Eurocentric, Enlightenment-driven
               product of capitalism" (Kruft 440).