|
When a poor Italian immigrant, Sabato Rodia, moved into the house on East 107th St, in Los Angeles, in 1921, no one could
have imagined that when he walked away 33 years later his legacy would attract praise and visitors from all around the world.
The house itself was unremarkable, with a small triangular yard that ra along the railway tracks in the run-down agricultural
neighbourhood of Watts, until he filled the yard with magnificent towers.
The Watts Towers are a majestic and inspiring tribute to one man's ingenuity and commitment. Spiralling almost 100 feet
skywards, throughout their turbulent history they have defied categorisation and physics. Without the aid of plans, using
only the most primitive tools, steel and cement encrusted with shells, tiles, broken bottles, plates and anything else that
came to hand, Rodia single-handedly built the seventeen structures he collectively named Nuestro Pueblo (our town) that stand
on the 400 sq metre site.
Now, eighty years after Rodia first set about constructing them, the Watts Towers are once again open to the public after
being closed for seven years of restoration work. For Mark Greenfield, Director of the Watts Towers Arts Center, a city run
education facility adjacent to the monument, the closure has been particularly difficult. "It's been frustrating because
you have people from all over the world who want to see the towers who just haven't had access to them."
Describing the towers has been a challenge for all those who've viewed them. At various times designated art, sculpture,
architecture or an assemblage, it's a dilemma best summarised by Calvin Trillin in his 1965 New Yorker article, "If a
man who has not labelled himself an artist happens to produce a work of art, he is likely to cause a lot of confusion and
inconvenience."
"I think it's artful sculpture if you want to tag a phrase on it," says Marvin Rand, who knew Rodia and has
photographed the towers extensively since first visiting them in 1948 for a school project. "He operated really out of
his gut. This is something intuitive in him. There are a few people who can do a wonderful thing in art and don't have to
be trained and this is one of them."
Trying to understand what the towers are is almost as difficult as understanding the man behind them. Sabato Rodia was
born on 12 February 1879 in Ribottoli, a tiny village 20 miles east of Naples. At around the age of 15 Sabato went to live
with his older brother Ricardo in Pennsylvania. Changing his name to Samuel, the diminutive Rodia (he was 4' 10") was
unable to read or write and took whatever work his brother was able to secure for him. When Ricardo died in a mining accident,
Sam moved around the country for the next few years, marrying first Lucia Ucci in 1902, with whom he had he had two boys Frank
and Alfred, then in 1917 Benita, who at 16 was 22 years his junior.
Having acquired the skill of cement worker, Rodia had begun building small sculptures in the couple's home in Long Beach,
California, including a stationery merry-go-round. When he and Benita split in 1920, he married a Mexican immigrant named
Carmen and moved, with the financial aid of his brother Tony, to the house in Watts where at the age of 42 he embarked on
the project that would consume him for the next 33 years.
With no money, he was forced to divide his time between his job and his towers. "He actually was working believe
it or not in Malibu," explains Rand of Rodia's long journey to work. "What he would do was work three or four days
at the tile factory and he would sleep on the beach and then he spent three days at the towers and never take a break. The
neighbours thought he was terribly eccentric. But the neighbours took a fondness to him and they would always bring broken
plates and pots and bottles and even scavenge for steel to make the towers and oftentimes he would bend the steel on the railroad
tracks."
The connection that Rodia, who by now was known as Simon, made with the local children is one that Greenfield is keen
to relay to the thousands of kids that now pass through the various classes held at his Arts Center. "Back when Simon
was building the towers children in the neigbourhood would bring him pieces of broken pottery and seashells and things like
that and he'd incorporate them in the towers. He'd pay them a penny and in some cases give them a cookie for each piece they
brought him and then kids would go home and start breaking up the dishes. There's an interesting play that came out called
'Breaking Plates' about Simon Rodia and the kids in the neighbourhood." The fascination with Rodia emerges in other unlikely
places. He can be seen on the cover of The Beatles' 'Sergeant Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band.'
There is speculation that Rodia's structures were inspired by the giant ceremonial towers he had seen as a young boy in
the annual Giglio festival back in Italy, but because of his limited intellect and vocabulary he was never able to fully express
his motivation for building the towers. "I wanted to do something in the United States because I was raised here you
understand," he once suggested. "I wanted to do something for the United States because there are nice people in
this country." It's an explanation Rand echoes. "In my talking to Simon, I think he was so grateful to be here
in the United States and be able to do the thing he wanted to do. So I think basically it's a tribute of an immigrant that
came to the US and this is his contribution. I think that's what it is. I think that if that's what it is, I think that
it was very meaningful for him to do this."
After 33 years working on the towers, in 1955 the enigmatic Rodia abruptly walked away, never to return, deeding the property
to a neighbour and moving up north to Martinez, California where he died in 1965. Although he proudly claimed never to have
had any help in their construction - "I think if I hire a man, he don't know what to do," - the fact that the Watts
Towers are still standing is attributable to a number of dedicated individuals. Following his departure the house burned down
and the structures became a concern for the City of Los Angeles Building and Safety Department who in 1957 issued an order
to "remove the dangerous towers". The Committee for Simon Rodia's Towers in Watts was formed and its long struggle
for their preservation began with a load test performed on one fateful day in 1959 that would determine the towers' future.
The test was devised by Bud Goldstone, an engineer involved in the Apollo program, who was brought in by the committee
to refute the city's claims that the structures were unsound. "I went up and poked around and decided that it was pretty
complicated to analyse and I didn't think that the city's civil engineers were smart enough to figure out if they were strong
enough or not so I volunteered my help and I wound up doing calculations and convincing myself they were safe.
The test involved putting a load on the main tower equivalent to an 80mph wind. With a crowd that included hundreds of
concerned locals as well as the committee members, TV crews and the city officials, the test began. If it passed, the towers
would be allowed to stand, if it failed, they were doomed. Marvin Rand remembers that October day in 1959 vividly. "When
it passed we just let out a cry. I can' tell you, a scream of joy that absolutely rang around the neighbourhood and we turned
to the City Building and Safety Department and said why don't you just leave now, get out of here and don't ever come back
here again."
Though victory that day belonged to Rodia's Towers and the committee, in the more than 40 years since that day, the city
have had to come back numerous times as the task of maintaining the structures has continued to be an ongoing problem. The
Towers and adjoining Arts Center were deeded to the City in 1976, but the political indifference to a monument that generates
little money and relatively little interest from Americans, more keen to visit Disneyland than venture into the notoriously
rough neighbourhood of Watts, have meant only the minimum resources have been allocated to the designated State Historic Monument.
Even before they reopen, Goldstone, who has been employed for the past 21 years as an engineering consultant for the towers,
voiced concern for their future. "We haven't really replaced or repaired every single piece and part in there. In fact
we finished eight of the structures in 1994 and the city has not allocated any money to the maintenance of those sculptures
so, since we finished repairing them at that time, they have come up with 2,000 significant cracks so the city is now trying
to figure out a way to find the money to pay for all that work. The work that we did for the past seven years was funded by
the Federal Emergency Management Agency because it was Northridge Earthquake repair damage and that cost the Federal Government
about $1.9 million."
Despite his fears, Goldstone is still optimistic about the tower's continued survival. "As long as some of us committee
members are still alive we'll keep fighting the city to make sure they provide the funds to fix them up."
The reopening of Watts Towers will be celebrated with two days of festivities including the 25th annual Simon Rodia Watts
Towers Jazz Festival. The close affinity between jazz and the towers is something that Greenfield has his own theory on. "In
many ways you can equate the towers with jazz. The improvised construction of the towers lend themselves to the improvisation
that takes place in jazz. Simon didn't know what he was going to do from one day to the next."
At 33 years, the Watts Towers would certainly represent one of the longest improvisations ever. How long Rodia's work
will continue to be enjoyed is yet to be determined. "The secret of keeping the Watts Towers up is filling the cracks,"
declares Goldstone. For Rand, filling the cracks is vital to both the tower and the immediate vicinity. "[Watts is]
a very impoverished community and it has been all these years and I think when you give people with no substance icons and
pieces of art and something that they can be proud of it's terribly important."
|
