Watts Towers

Thirty three years, one man, no blueprint

Sabato Simon Rodia began building in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1921, working alone after his day job as a construction laborer and tile setter. He had no formal training and, by his own account, no prior history of making art. Using scavenged steel, broken bottles, seashells, and cast off ceramic tile, he bent and wired frames by hand, coated them in mortar, and climbed his own unfinished towers wearing only a window washer's belt for safety.

An unexplained ending

Rodia worked on the towers until 1954, then deeded the property to a neighbor and left Los Angeles for good. He gave few interviews and never offered a clear account of why he built them or why he stopped. During World War II, rumors circulated that the towers were secret radio antennas signaling enemy forces; in the 1950s, city officials nearly had them demolished as unsafe before a stress test proved otherwise.

A landmark built from nothing

The Watts Towers are now a National Historic Landmark and one of the most cited works of American outsider art, a category defined by untrained, self taught creators working outside the gallery system. Why did one immigrant laborer spend 33 years on the towers, then leave and never come back?

The towers sit within Simon Rodia State Historic Park in Watts, with an adjoining arts center offering guided tours on select days. Check the Watts Towers Arts Center schedule before visiting, since close access to the towers themselves is sometimes tour only.