under cover ladies night wallpaper: Watts Towers Day

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Pam Grier at Watts Towers in the late 1960s

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The Basics

'Born in a village about 20 miles from Naples, the teenage Sabato (Simon) Rodia came to the United States around the turn of the century, when he was in his mid-teens. He worked his way across the country as a laborer, settling in Long Beach, then acquiring the small triangular plot in Watts where his great project began shortly after his third marriage collapsed. The Watts Towers, as they are now popularly known, were created by Rodia completely unassisted from 1921 to 1954. He named the Towers 'El Pueblo Nuestro'.

'Rodia's elaborately-carved and adorned work is made of metal and mortar, inlaid with tiles, scraps of pottery, seashells and bits of colored bottle glass. It reaches nearly 100 feet high; exposed to the elements, it’s vulnerable to corrosion, cracking and the flaking-off of decorative pieces.

'It's thought that Rodia started this immense project by jazzing up his chimney (the house burned down long ago, but the chimney still stands). Day by day, year by year, his work multiplied to 15 tightly spaced sculptures, among them a ship, a barbecue, a gazebo with built-in birdbaths, enclosing walls, and five towers. To shape finials on the towers and a gazebo, he used colanders, pots and pans, and a bowling ball. Rodia built in stages: He made the towers with interlocking rings, letting lower levels dry before climbing them like ladders to build higher and higher. He used no power tools or nails; he worked from no drawn plans.

'When the towers were works in progress, most people didn’t know what to make of the overgrown back-yard project. In 1948, inspectors from the city building and safety department asked Rodia why he was building them. He claimed they were an homage to California highways: The tallest was 101 feet in honor of Highway 101; another was 99 feet for Highway 99; a third was 66 feet for Highway 66, he lied. The inspectors took no further action.

Sabato (Simon) Rodilla outside his Watts Towers

'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. After he died, he rematerialized on the cover of "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", peeking shyly from behind Bob Dylan and peering over the heads of Karl Marx and H.G. Wells.

'Saving one man's powerful vision from destruction requires a small army. Among the towers’ nemeses were vandals who chipped away at the structure; unqualified restorers hired by the city in the mid-1970s; erosion that undermined the towers'stability; and, of course, earthquakes. Conservation has been going on since the state assumed ownership in 1978. The 1994 North Ridge earthquake caused fractures that required more urgent attention. Those repairs, such as reinforcing both towers and flying buttresses with interior steel rods and resecuring loose tiles, cost $2 million and closed to the towers to the public for seven years. They reopened in September 2001.' -- The Los Angeles Times

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Mark Lancaster's photos of Watts Towers in 1973/74

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Lawrence Harris' scale model of the Watts Towers

'In 1996, apparently with too much time on my hands, I started to piece together a 1/4"=1' scale model of the Watts Towers of Sabato (Simon) Rodia. Constructed of a combination of basswood, museum board, plaster, and gesso, the model took about 9 months to complete. The accuracy of the layout and massing would not be possible without the help of preservation activist and great friend Seymour Rosen and his archive photographs, as well as site measurements and technical data from conservation engineer N.J. "Bud" Goldstone. The model is now on display on my dining room table in Houston, Texas.' -- Lawrence Harris

... as seen on The Simpsons

Fan letter from Don DeLillo

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Notable guest appearances

* The Towers are featured in the opening scene of Wattstax, a 1973 documentary film by Mel Stuart that focused on the 1972 Wattstax music festival and the African American community of Watts in Los Angeles.
* The Watts Towers play a significant role in the 1991 crime-thriller film Ricochet.
* An episode of the HBO original series Six Feet Under features the towers, (series 3, episode 4, timecode 33.17).
* Dennis Hopper's film Colors features a car chase scene that ends when the Crips' car being chased crashes into one of the towers. The ending of the movie also includes a scene with which the towers are directly in the background.
* The 1976 blaxploitation horror film Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde climaxes with the title villain confronted by police outside the towers. The police refuse to fire on him because he is standing in front of the mosaic walls surrounding the towers. He escapes inside the structure and climbs one of the towers until he is shot down by the police. The towers were even featured prominently in the poster art for the film.
* One scene in Andy Warhol & Taylor Meade's 1964 film Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of was shot in the towers.
* The towers feature heavily in an episode of the short-lived science fiction series Dark Skies, with the strong suggestion being that Rodia was inspired to build them by a telepathic vision of the human DNA helix.
* An episode of Sanford and Son called "Tower Power" involves Fred Sanford building a structure from his own junk that was obviously inspired by the Watts towers, although they are not mentioned by name.
* Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas featured a re-creation of the Watts Towers, in East Los Santos, Los Santos

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