A
Man's Private Cathedral -- In his back yard, from
1921 to 1954, Italian immigrant Simon Rodia single-handedly built this
ethereal edifice of steel frames, reinforced in concrete and embellished
with bits of bottle glass, ceramic tiles and pottery shards.
The city of Watts, south-central of Los Angeles, has been a
gritty blue-collar African-American neighborhood since Rodia's time.
Site of LA's oldest annual jazz festival,
Watts is also remembered as a frontline of the civil rights movement from
the 1950s to the 1960s.
This photo is taken with the
Canon G1 digital camera.