The Watts Towers: One Man, 33 Years, No Plan

1727 East 107th Street. Seventeen structures of steel, mortar, and found objects rising to 99 feet from a residential lot. Built by Simon Rodia, Italian immigrant tile setter, 1921 to 1954. No engineering training. No machinery. No plan. No permit. No explanation except that he wanted to do something big.

He pressed into the mortar whatever the city left at his feet: broken tiles, seashells, bottle caps, mirrors, 70,000 pieces of abalone shell that catch the light and throw it back in green-blue shimmer. He worked alone. When he finished, he gave the property to a neighbor and left. The city tried to demolish the towers. An engineer attached a cable and pulled with 10,000 pounds of force. The tower held. The cable broke.

At the base, Rodia pressed corn cobs, tools, and his own handprints into wet mortar. Most people crane their necks upward and miss them. The towers are ambitious. The handprints are personal. One person, working alone long enough, made something that outlasted every institution that tried to tear it down.