Preserve & Protect

Will a new partnership between the City of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art help save a local landmark?

It's one of the most awe-inspiring works of public art in Los Angeles, yet most people — we're talking tourists and locals — haven't ever seen it. According to a recent New York Times article, officials say that most of the 45,000 yearly visitors to the Watts Towers — a set of 17 outdoor steeland-mortar sculptures decorated with a mish-mash of broken glass, shells, pottery shards and tiles — are from overseas.

Simon Rodia, an Italian immigrant and creator of the Towers — which he built between 1921 and 1954 — would be pained to hear that. But attendance problems are only the beginning. For the last few decades, the City of Los Angeles has managed the site — which inspired the 2006 documentary I Build the Tower — and budget restraints jeopardized ongoing conservation efforts and limited tours to four days a week.

All this is changing, thanks to a recent partnership with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. According to Mark Gilberg, the director of LACMA’s conservation center, the plan calls for the museum to create a comprehensive conservation plan for the site. “This includes a potential long-term budget, staffing structure and daily maintenance of minor repairs,” he says. In February, the museum secured a $500,000 grant from the James Irvine Foundation to help develop this plan.

The City is working with LACMA to start a shuttle bus service between the museum and the Towers in order to help overcome another major challenge: the location. The breathtaking structures (Olga Garay, executive director of the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, says she was “bowled over by their majesty” upon seeing them for the first time) are far from LA’s tourist hotspots. It also them for the first time) are fa doesn’t help that the area is mostly remembered as the site of not one, but two famous riots.

As Garay says, “Increased access will indeed help us generate more interest in the Towers and build support for the artistic inspiration they represent.”

Those are words Rodia would be overjoyed to hear.

1727 E 107th St, Los Angeles; 213-847-4646; wattstowers.us

By the Numbers

100  HEIGHT (IN FEET) OF TALLEST TOWER, WHICH CONTAINS THE LONGEST SLENDER REINFORCED CONCRETE COLUMN IN THE WORLD
140  LENGTH (IN FEET) OF THE “SOUTH WALL”
15,000  GLAZED TILES USED
11,000  PIECES OF POTTERY USED