The Kavach Building: Cornerstones and Names

One more post before the new year. Going away for the weekend and I've got to dive into classes on the fourth, so I may not have time to update this for awhile. Won't have much new, anyway. I tried to get a few more photos and the manager, Oscar, came out and yelled at me. Called me a peeping tom and said he was going to call the police. He didn't seem to remember me from the time when i asked about the apartments but that was over a year ago now.

There's a cornerstone, but it's buried behind bushes and a tree (from the street). Left hand corner if you're facing the building. I've gotten a couple half-assed photos of it. It's hard enough to keep standing out on the street taking photos. People don't react well (like Oscar didn't).

There aren't any pictures that show the whole thing, but I've gotten it from a couple angles and I think the finished thing looks like this.

Its a crap picture, I know. I had a nice version I made in photoshop that had the engraving font and the granite patterns and all that, but it was one of the things that vanished from my computer. 1894 isn't that old, but its pretty old for Los Angeles. Downtown was around then, but most everything between there and Santa Monica was either oil fields or undeveloped land. There wasn't even a Hollywood yet, or Hollywoodland as it was first called.

I keep calling this place the Kavach Building, but I don't know if that's its real name. It's the word engraved on the lintel above the main door. It's all caps. KAVACH. I've tried to get a picture of it but half of them there's a branch in the way and the other half got deleted by whatever bug hit my hard drive.

Lots of places use "Kavach" for a name if you Google it. It's Hindu, if these translations are right. It might just be a general blessing or something. I wonder if the building had a Hindu architect.

Theres heraldry on the building's facings, but it's blank. It doesn't match up with anything i can find in books or online. It makes me wonder if maybe it isn't actual heraldry. Maybe it's just a picture of a shield. It could just be something the architect saw and liked. The building is kind of a mishmash of styles.