In the late 1950s, King was working as an assistant to Hollywood photographer
Bob Willoughby. King was present when Willoughby's friend, film editor
William Cartwright, told the photographer about first seeing the towers and wondering why they had been abandoned. King expressed an interest in working with Cartwright to save the towers, and the two men traced ownership to Joseph Montoya, an employee of a local dairy. King and Cartwright arranged a meeting with Montoya and asked if he would be interested in selling the towers. Montoya said "yes" and set a price of $3,000. "We wrote out a $20 check for the deposit right there, and we walked out of that building 15 feet off the ground. We couldn't get over it — we owned those damned things," King told
The New Yorker in a 1965 interview. "Nick ... understood the international merit of the towers," said Jeanne Morgan, a charter member of the Committee for
Simon Rodia's Towers in Watts. "Without his participation, the towers would have been destroyed" under a demolition order issued by the City of Los Angeles after they had been declared a potential safety hazard. ==References==