Storm damages Watts Towers

Wednesday’s torrential rain and hail washed some of the glitter out of the Watts Towers: About 300 decorative fragments, many of them pieces of green and blue glass from old 7-Up and Milk of Magnesia bottles, were jarred loose from their cement settings, according to Virginia Kazor, curator of the city-run site.

“It was the hail hitting them at just the right angle, and they pop out,” Kazor said. Most of the fallen fragments were smaller than a quarter, she said; the largest was a 1-by-2-inch piece of tile. Most, she said, came loose from the lower reaches of the monument, which is topped by three spires reaching as high as 99 1/2 feet.

Kazor expects the damage to keep workers busy for a week refastening pieces to the spots where they belong. She said that guided tours of the towers, given Tuesdays through Sundays, would not be interrupted.

The storm also flooded the gallery in the neighboring Watts Towers Arts Center. Rosie Lee Hooks, the center’s director, said a quick-thinking employee came in early Thursday and rescued art objects that were at floor level, including 13 special decorated shovels commissioned from John Outterbridge and other area artists for the center’s current show, “Spirits of the Ancestors.”

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Mike Boehm