Looking for that special something as a keepsake from the 20th century?

As part of its "Souvenirs for the End of the Century," a New York design studio offers for your consideration its "Buildings of Disaster."

For $95 each, you can buy a miniature replica of six infamous structures, including Dallas' former Texas School Book Depository, site of President John F. Kennedy's assassination.

Other buildings, which weigh more than a pound and stand 2 to 6 inches: the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, after its 1986 meltdown; New York's World Trade Center and Oklahoma City's Murrah Federal Building, after their bombings; Washington's Watergate complex, site of the 1972 break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters; and Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski's cabin in Montana.

Explaining the point of the nickel-cast creations, the Boym Design Studio catalog states: "The images of burning or exploded buildings make a different, populist history of architecture, one based on emotional involvement rather than on scholarly appreciation."

Pub Date: 3/06/99