Photograph by the Los Angeles Times

Simon Rodia (or Rodilla as The Times referred to him in early stories) with his creation in 1952.

By Devon McReynolds

On a recent smoldering Tuesday afternoon, I visited the Watts Towers
for the first time in the three years I’ve lived in Los Angeles. The
heat was impossible and the area beneath the towers and structures was
closed (it will reopen in September).

Even so, in the 15 minutes I
stayed there, three groups of art-seekers came to visit, and all were
in just as much awe as I was. Once you get close to the towers, you can
see the incredible creativity with which Simon Rodia meticulously
pieced together scrap metal, broken dishes, seashells, pieces of glass
bottles, tiles and bed springs into a stunning modern art experience in
the middle of a Los Angeles neighborhood.

Fifty
years ago this summer, public debate arose over whether the folk art
sculptures were structurally sound. H.L. Manley, head of the
conservation bureau of the Department of Building and Safety, said:
"Inspections show these structures are dangerous and should be torn
down. They were built without a permit, without inspection and without
approval of the design."

On May 25, 1959, the Building and Safety
Commission declared the towers unsafe and planned to demolish them if
they failed to pass a 10,000-pound "stress test" to see if they would
topple to the ground.

The enraged art community, locally and
nationally, including New York's Museum of Modern Art and the
Guggenheim Museum, fought back by supporting preservation. In May, the
International Assn. of Art Critics sent a letter of protest to Mayor
Norris Poulson. James Johnson Sweeney, the director of the Guggenheim,
praised the towers as "an expression of enjoyment and creative work
very rare in this country, where we are accustomed to think of the more
practical issues."

Rodia, 81, refused to take part in the
controversy. He had moved to Northern California five years earlier
after leaving a grant deed to the property with a neighbor. The deed
changed hands again before being bought by William Cartwright and
Nicholas King, whose attempts at preservation drew officials' scrutiny.

The
Times and Mirror-News also took a stand for saving the towers. "The
Washington Monument, the Statue of Liberty, even the Leaning Tower of
Pisa have never been condemned as attractive nuisances from which
neighborhood kids could fall and break their necks," the Mirror's Jeff
Davis wrote on July 31, 1959, before the crucial test. He concluded:
"Presumably, if the towers are still standing, the populace will then
cheer loudly and the villains from the Department of Building and
Safety will slink away and art will be triumphant."

Mirror columnist and television host Paul Coates wrote extensively about the towers and in 1954 he came close to getting a televised interview with Rodia.
An assistant brought Rodia to KTTV 10 or 15 minutes before airtime, but
as soon as he was introduced to Coates at the studio gates, Rodia fled
down Sunset Boulevard — with Coates and his assistant trying in vain
to chase him down.

On Oct. 10, 1959, the Watts Towers passed the
test, withstanding a side pull of 10,000 pounds, and they have become
an internationally known landmark.

There's no danger of the
Watts Towers falling victim to skeptics any longer, but during the
anniversary of the debate, visit for yourself. Just make sure to resist
any childhood temptation to swing from its sculpted metal rods — even
though they withstood 10,000 pounds of pressure, these aren't your
playground's monkey bars.

Note: UCLA student Devon McReynolds recently completed her
summer internship with the Daily Mirror and is now in Paris.