“Pruitt-Igoe definitely needs to be marked for the good of St. Louis,” Allen said. “Right now, with Ferguson, that history’s on our minds. But there always comes a time when we forget these things.”

Bob Hansman, a professor at Washington University who is writing a book about Pruitt-Igoe, agrees that whatever McKee ends up building there should include some sort of marker or memorial. What if the development incorporated the remnants of Dickson Street, one of the old complex’s main roads, into its design? Or a streetlight from the original housing project that was left intact?

Memorials about painful things can be powerful reminders, Hansman said. No one wants to tear down the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King was shot just because it’s painful.

“Pruitt-Igoe had international significance,” Hansman said. “If it was framed properly, I mean physically and metaphorically, it would have a lot of meaning.”

It still has a lot of meaning for Robert Green, 62, who moved into the complex with his family in 1964 and grew up there, leaving in 1974 when he was 20 years old.

“When I was there, there was a lot of death, a lot of murders,” Green said.