Veteran entertainment executive Ken Williams is the first to admit that a decade-long obsession turned him into a bit of a bad boy. Perched on a sofa next to Jann, his wife of 18 years, he takes a deep breath, then sheepishly confesses: “It’s a bit embarrassing to talk about, but at one point, I was sneaking stuff into the house in the middle of the night.” He pauses, glancing thoughtfully at his wife, before admitting, “I just didn’t want her to know.”

So what, you wonder, was the mauvais garçon of Bel-Air spiriting out of the trunk of his Mercedes under the cover of darkness? Little replicas of the Eiffel Tower. And the Leaning Tower of Pisa. As well as Lenin’s Tomb, the Rose Bowl and even the Brooklyn Bridge (yes, someone really sold Ken, the former senior vice president and treasurer of Columbia Pictures Entertainment in New York, the Brooklyn Bridge). In fact, over the last 12 years or so, Ken has collected well over a thousand miniature buildings, spanning the range from elegant mid 19th-century European Grand Tour souvenirs originally sold to upper-class Americans and Brits, to bank replicas given as depositor premiums, to today’s street version of the Empire State Building.

“It was like having rabbits in the house,” says Jann, an architect. “They just kept popping up. I knew he was sneaking them in but he wouldn’t admit it. I’d say, ‘That’s new, isn’t it?’ and he’d go, ‘Oh no, you just haven’t noticed it before.’” Not that Jann wasn’t a bit of an enabler herself. After all, she’s the one who, several years ago, orchestrated the remodeling of their spacious L.A. home, tucked away in a quiet neighborhood with views overlooking the Los Angeles Country Club and Century City beyond, into a sort of quasi-museum for Ken’s growing collection, which spills over bookcases and climbs the walls of a two-story-high library specially designed to showcase his little Gothic churches, Beaux-Arts style banks, classic monuments, World’s Fair theme buildings and such prized oddities as a replica of Hitler’s Bavarian summer house.

According to the souvenir building bible, Monumental Miniatures by Margaret Majua and David Weingarten, the production of mass-produced miniature buildings began in the first part of the 19th century and coincided with “the rise of European tourism as a popular pastime.” Travelers would head off for Rome or Paris or London and bring back a miniature of some classic building—Rome’s Temple of Hercules, for example, or London’s Cleopatra’s Needle—as a souvenir of their visit. One of the biggest manufacturers of souvenir buildings was Kronheimer & Oldenbush, German immigrants who opened a factory in Manhattan in 1895. Their miniatures, cast in lead and plated in silver, copper, brass or gold, are unmatched in detail and finish. Unfortunately, the firm was a casualty of World War II and closed in 1942, under pressure to eliminate non-essential production. In fact, the war brought an end to most souvenir building manufacturers worldwide. A renaissance was sparked in the mid-1970s with the publication of Dort Brown’s modest pamphlet Souvenir Buildings: A Collection of Identified Miniatures. For the first time, values were suggested for such rarities as a 1930s Chrysler Building ($8) and a lighter representing the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Johnson Wax Tower in Racine, Wisconsin ($15). Prices have skyrocketed since, with the more desirable buildings now selling for $1,000 or more.