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Sam Rodia, creator of Watts Towers

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Order Number	00037136
Title	Sam Rodia, creator of Watts Towers
Collection ID	Herald Examiner Collection
Location/Accession	HE box 7305-Watts Towers.
Date	1983
Physical Description	1 photograph :b&w
Description	Portrait of Sam Rodia. Rodia created the Watts Towers without aid in 33 intensely purposeful years. He worked with no drawing-board designs or machine equipment. The structures were literally "built in the air" using only the simple tools of a tile-setter, together with window-washer's belt and bucket. They are a construction of steel rods, mesh, and mortar, in a maze of forms which soar to a hundred-foot height. The weblike members are covered with a glittering incrustation of broken tiles, dishes, bottles, and more than 70,000 seashells. Woven together by overhead arches around the spires are fountains, pavilions, and labyrinths. This walled magic garden is covered, too, with multicolored mosaic, or with imprints of tools, hands, corncobs, and baskets, interwoven here and there with the initials of their builder, a poor tile-setter who had in his mind for thirty years to do something big, to have his fingerprint on this obscure corner of the world. Photo dated: March 11, 1983.
Subject	Rodia, Simon,--1879-1965. Simon Rodia's Towers (Los Angeles, Calif.). Watts (Los Angeles, Calif.). Los Angeles Herald-Examiner photographs. Herald-Examiner Collection photographs.
Format	Photographic prints
Reproduction Information	Images available for reproduction and use. Please see the Ordering & Use page at http://tessa.lapl.org/OrderingUse.html for additional information.
Sub-Collection Name	Los Angeles Herald Examiner Photo Collection