The Watts Towers aren't officially open for their centennial, having been closed for restoration since 2017. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) A hundred years ago, in what was then the semi-rural ...

For more than 30 years, a man who stood scarcely five feet tall built a kind of skyscraper in his back yard. The Watts Towers is a soaring cluster of edifices, a supreme example of outsider art. The ...

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 permits ...

Introduction: Sabato Rodia's Towers in Watts and the search for common ground / Luisa Del Giudice -- Part I: Situating Sabato Rodia and the Watts Towers : art movements, cultural contexts, and ...

If a Los Angeles group backed by Tony Hawk has its way, young skaters will soon be kick-flipping and airwalking in the shadows of Watts Towers, a cultural landmark located in an emerging but still ...

A small altar bloomed in the shadow of the Watts Towers, beneath a large butcher-paper sign painted with the words “From Watts with love: RIP Ermias Nipsey Hussle Asghedom.” Kneeling on the pavement, ...

The director of the Watts Towers Arts Center says that the safety of visitors to the Towers, a historic, city-run cultural landmark, is being compromised because its parking lot has been bulldozed for ...

"For us, the garden is a physical manifestation of peace," says Oya Sherrills of the Survivors Healing Garden in Watts. (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times) Walking into the Survivors Healing Garden on ...

A hundred years ago, in what was then the semi-rural farming community of Watts, a 40ish-year-old Italian immigrant laborer named Sabato Rodia bought a little home on a dead-end block by the railroad ...