The Watts Towers
Los Angeles, California.- The Watts Towers or Towers of Simon Rodia in the Watts district of Los Angeles, California, is a collection of 17 interconnected structures, two of which reach heights of over 99 feet (30 m). The Towers were built by Italian immigrant construction worker Sabato (“Sam” or “Simon”) Rodia in his spare time over a period of 33 years, from 1921 to 1954. The work is an example of non-traditional vernacular architecture and American Naïve art. The Towers are located near (and visible from) the 103rd Street-Kenneth Hahn Station of the Metro Rail LACMTA Blue Line.
The Watts Towers were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990. According to reviewer Robert Koehler in Variety, the documentary film I Build the Tower is “the most complete visual account of self-made architect Simon Rodia and his masterpiece.”
The sculptures’ armatures are constructed from steel pipes and rods, wrapped with wire mesh, coated with mortar. The main supports are embedded with pieces of porcelain, tile, and glass. They are decorated with found objects, including bed frames, bottles, ceramic tiles, scrap metal and sea shells. Rodia called the towers Nuestro Pueblo, or “our town.” Rodia built them with no special equipment or (so far as is known) predetermined design, working alone with hand tools and window-washer’s equipment. Neighborhood children brought pieces of broken glass and pottery to Rodia in hopes they would be added to the project, but the majority of Rodia’s material consisted of damaged pieces from the Malibu Pottery, where he worked for many years. Green glass includes recognizable soft drink bottles, some still bearing the logos of 7 Up, Squirt, Bubble Up, and Canada Dry; blue glass appears to be from milk of magnesia bottles.
Rodia bent much of the Towers’ framework from scrap rebar, using nearby railroad tracks as makeshift vise. Other items came from alongside the Pacific Electric Railway right of way between Watts and Wilmington. Rodia often walked the right of way all the way to Wilmington in search of material, a distance of nearly 20 miles (32 km).
Rodia reportedly did not get along with his neighbors, some of whom allowed their children to vandalize his work. Rumors that the towers were antennae for communicating with enemy Japanese forces, or contained buried treasure, caused suspicion and further vandalism.
In 1955, Rodia gave the property away and left, reportedly tired of the abuse he had received. He retired to Martinez, California, and never came back. He died a decade later.
The property changed hands, Rodia’s bungalow inside the enclosure was burned down, and the city of Los Angeles condemned the structure and ordered it razed. Actor Nicholas King and a film editor William Cartwright visited the site in 1959, saw the neglect, and purchased the property for $3,000 in order to preserve it. When the city found out about the transfer, it decided to perform the demolition before the transfer went through. The towers had already become famous and there was opposition from around the world. King, Cartwright, and a curator of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, along with area architects, artists, and community activists formed the Committee for Simon Rodia’s Towers in Watts. The Committee negotiated with the city to allow for an engineering test to establish the safety of the structures.
For the test, steel cable was attached to each tower and a crane was used to exert lateral force. The crane was unable to topple or even shift the towers with the forces applied, and the test was concluded when the crane experienced mechanical failure.
The committee preserved the towers independently until 1975, when it deeded the site to the City of Los Angeles, which in turn deeded it to the State of California in 1978. It is now designated the Watts Towers of Simon Rodia State Historic Park. It is operated by the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.
The towers are one of nine folk art sites listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990.
The structures suffered minor damage in the Northridge Earthquake in 1994, after which they were repaired and reopened in 2001. The towers were damaged during a 2008 windstorm and were closed to the public briefly until March 2009.
As of Friday, March 26, the employment of the educational coordinator of the Watts Towers Arts Center was terminated. Eight on-going educational programs that serve over 6,000 individuals—many of whom are at-risk youth—were forced to close down. This will effectively dismantle the functioning of a community cultural gathering place and a vital host to the world renowned Watts Towers .
The local City Council representative has cynically called for the privatization of the Watts Towers Arts Center while she is actively working with the Wasserman Media Group and the Tony Hawk Foundation to develop funding for a Skateboard Park to be built immediately adjacent to the Watts Towers themselves. This construction would deprive visitors of a full view of Rodia’s monumental work of architectural sculpture and destroy the aesthetic ambience of a National Historical Landmark. This is like building a skateboard park on the steps below the Lincoln Memorial or at the entrance of the Statue of Liberty . Requests for this Skateboard Park to be placed farther away from the Watts Towers have been ignored.
As art lovers, please help us save the Watts Towers , the Watts Towers Arts Center and the arts of Los Angeles .
WRITE and CALL these public officials in support of the continuing integrity of the Watts Towers and its Arts Center :
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
Los Angeles City Hall
200 N. Spring Street, Rm 303
Los Angeles , CA 90012
(213) 978-0600
Councilwoman Janice Hahn, District 15
Los Angeles City Hall
200 N. Spring Street, Rm 435
Los Angeles , CA 90012
(213)-473-7015
Olga Garay, General Manager
Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA)
City of Los Angeles
201 N. Figueroa Street, Ste 1400
Los Angeles , CA 90012
(213) 202-5500
ALSO please click onto this site to sign a petition in support of the Watts Towers Arts Center :
www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stopculturalgenocide
AND click on to this site to help support all of the affected Cultural Affairs arts sites:
http://www.artsforla.org/take_action/culturalcenters
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really? you people are opposed to a skateboard park in the middle of a place which would educate young children who would go to the park about art? seriously? this is sarcasm, right? if anyone in los angeles would be protective enough of these towers it would be tony hawk. i can only assume that you’re from the very old generation of stuck ups. times have changed. get with the program and do one of the only things you can to save this landmark or stand in it’s way and kill it.