Watts Towers

Simon Rodia, a self-taught Italian immigrant construction worker, spent over three decades building 17 steel-frame towers rising as high as 99 feet in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Working alone without machinery, scaffolding, or bolts, he covered the steel skeletons in mortar embedded with broken tile, glass, seashells, and scrap metal collected from the surrounding streets. Rodia gave the property away and left Los Angeles for good in 1955, and the towers survived a 1959 city demolition order only after a stress test proved their strength. Now a National Historic Landmark and California Historic Park, the site reopened in 2022 after a major restoration.