Watt Towers

One striking feature of Los Angeles is the absence of monuments, this may also be a general feature of US cities in general, especially if compared to european ones. Statues do not abound anywhere or they are confined in certain places. After all the most famous monument in the US, the statue of liberty is a gift from the french people.
In LA there are very few monuments, one is a bust of James Dean at the Observatory, which could be arguably considered a monument itself. The other is the Hollywood sign, which evolved from advert sign to monument. A third, and a non-hollywood related one is the Watts Tower. I had never heard of them, but in Reyner Banham landmark book "Los Angeles, the architecture of four ecology" published in 1971, a book I have read recently, the watts towers figure as reference point in all of the maps of the city. Thus, on a saturday morning, with an English American colleague from the Huntington we set towards south east LA. It is also the opportunity to drive in some of the freeways I have not driven yet, the 110 (san pedro) south of the junction with the 10 (Santa Monica), the 105 and the 710. The Towers are located in the vast plain that stands south of Downtown LA. An area inhabited by the less wealthy sections of the immigrant population, the African American who populated it for most of the 20th century, and more recently by the spanish speaking population. The area is famous for the Watts riots of 1965. There are no signs on the freeways, directing to them, they stand around 105 streets. As you park the street, a security man wearing a kippah and speaking spanish welcomes you. The towers are the legacy of an Italian immigrant who moved to this area and in the back yard of his house started to built these structures in reinforced concrete and then decorating them with fragments of tiles, of porcelain, with seashells and pieces of broken glass. They are surrounded by a wall, also decorated in the same fashion. The immigrant name was Simon Rodia, he built them between 1921 and 1954, in 1955 he moved away from LA and left the property to a neighbour.

The african american guide that tells the story frames it in terms of one-man-dream pursued throughout his life. However, the towers can best be understood in terms of folk art. They are repetitive and somewhat neurotic. One is not surprised that in the 1950s and 1960s there were several plans to take them down. But eventually, after the riots, they were slowly transformed into a monument and they have become one of the landmark of LA and certainly a focus for the Watts area. They were recognized the status of National Landmark in 1990. A cultural center was established as early as 1970 and it hosts a small art exhibitions.