Simon Rodia

1879-1965 · Los Angeles, USA

An Italian labourer spent 33 years building steel towers in his Watts backyard with hand tools, window-washer’s gear and no plans. Then he gave the lot away and never came back.

The life

Rodia emigrated from southern Italy as a teenager and worked quarries, railroads and construction across the American West. In 1921 he bought a triangular lot in Watts, Los Angeles and began Nuestro Pueblo, our town: three openwork towers of rebar and mesh, hand-packed with mortar, climbing to nearly thirty metres. No scaffolding, no bolts, no welds, no drawings. In 1955, finished and tired of vandalism, he deeded the lot to a neighbour and moved north. When the city tried to condemn the towers in 1959, an engineering stress test famously failed to budge them.

The work

The Watts Towers, encrusted with seventy thousand fragments of broken glass, pottery, tile and seashell, green 7 Up and blue Milk of Magnesia bottles glittering in the sun. Now a National Historic Landmark and the heart of a Watts arts community.

Why we love them

He answered the biggest question, what is one person capable of, with a skyline.

Go deeper

• Watts Towers Arts Center
• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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