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 ...

Thirteen miles from the coast, marine biologist Bruno Pernet found himself surrounded by concrete, asphalt and an assortment of roughly 10,000 seashells. There were the iridescent shells of black ...

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 ...

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 ...

"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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...