The Pruitt-Igoe MythBuilt in 1956, Pruitt-Igoe was heralded as the model public housing project of the future. Two decades later, it ended in rubble - its razing an iconic event that the architectural theorist Charles Jencks famously called "the death of modernism." The footage and images of its implosion have helped to perpetuate a myth of failure, a failure that has been used to critique Modernist architecture, attack public assistance programs, and stigmatize public housing residents.The Pruitt-Igoe Myth seeks to set the historical record straight.