The Watts Towers aren’t officially open for their centennial, having been closed for restoration since 2017. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) By Christopher Reynolds. Staff Writer Follow.

Muralist, teacher and activist Michael Massenburg, 62, top, with Patrick Taylor, 29, left, and Allyson Dixon-Duarte, 20, restore the John Outterbridge mural at the Watts Towers Arts Center Campus.

The Watts Towers rise above homes in the South Central Los Angeles community of Watts. The hand-sculpted structures were built by Simon Rodia between 1921-1954. Before You Go.

(CBS News) In Los Angeles, the Watts section is known for showing a community at its worst and its best. It's also where two giant spires known as the Watts Towers have withstood the test of time.

It took Italian immigrant Simon “Sam” Rodia more than 25 years to build the Watts Towers, starting work on the massive, one-of-a-kind structure in 1921. The city later protested. Rodia had no ...

The Watts Towers are one of three sites in California to recently be listed as "at risk" by The Cultural Landscape Foundation. "It's at risk because of the environment that it's in," says Preusser.

The Watts Towers were built by one man, without help and without proper construction tools or blueprints. Continue reading for the story of how Simon Rodia single-handedly built the 17-structure ...

The Watts Towers gained a bit of national recognition this week, but not for a happy reason: The outdoor sculpture composed of salvaged steel, seashells, tile, glass, wire mesh, and concrete by ...

Simon Rodia’s story will be told with a showing of the 2006 documentary “I Built the Tower” at 3 p.m. Sunday, July 30, at the Warner Grand Theatre.

A simple fact -- the Watts Towers were the creation of Italian architect Simon Rodia, built over the course of three decades and finished 10 years before the Watts riots -- belongs somewhere in ...

The Watts Towers rise in Los Angeles like a strange evocation of Gaudi's monumental art nouveau church, the Sagrada Familia, in Barcelona. And to some ...