Dome

Painted concrete embossed with hearts, floor of the walkway under the pergola; The Towers were built by Italian immigrant construction worker Sabato ("Sam" or "Simon") Rodia in his spare time over a period of 33 years, from 1921 to 1954. The work is an example of non-traditional vernacular architecture and naive art. Rodia had immigrated to the US ca. 1893. In 1921, in the garden of his frame house (now destroyed) in Watts, he began construction of a series of towers and garden ornaments, formed of steel bars (rebar) covered in layers of concrete reinforced with wire, encrusted with pieces of broken pottery, glass, broken bottles and sea shells. They are an open web of bars, self-supporting and built without aid of scaffolding, the tallest of them eventually rising to 99 ft. In 1954 Rodia abruptly stopped work on his garden sculpture and towers, and deeded them to a neighbor; he left Watts and moved to Martinez, near San Francisco. In 1957 the city of Los Angeles began proceedings to demolish the towers but a number of artists and others interested in the huge sculptures brought suit, subjected the towers to a stress test and convinced the city to leave the towers as a public cultural monument. They were designated both a National Historic Landmark and a California Historical Landmark in 1990. Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.oxfordartonline.com/ (accessed 7/30/2013)