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.