Man, What a Setup

"My husband kind of did it behind my back," said Dina. Although she was shocked, she realized he was doing it to meet a deep personal longing. "Men do need their sanctuaries," she said, reasoning that she gets to decide about the decor in most of the rest of the house.

Once his male friends saw what Jones had done, they wanted the same. Among themselves, they call it "building a mantown."

In a new book, "Manspace," author Sam Martin describes hundreds of male-oriented rooms he found across the country -- wine cellars, high-tech garages for vintage car collections, cozy libraries, music-composing or writing studios placed in rustic outbuildings away from the main house. A man in Las Vegas installed his own professional boxing ring; a science fiction junkie near Philadelphia constructed a replica of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise to house his home theater.

The book contains dozens of photos of such guy-themed rooms, and has sold more than 11,000 copies since its release in October.

"It seems to be striking a nerve with a lot of guys," Martin said in an interview. "Guys have been wandering in the wilderness a long time. They have had an identity crisis."

The male-focused room fad has also been noted by housing researcher Deborah Rosenstein, vice president of the Christopher Cos., a Fairfax-based home builder, who notes that it is predominantly a feature of single-family houses that are big enough to allow the owners to designate space for their own particular use.

"Women have always had hobby rooms, and now there are hobby rooms for men," Rosenstein said. "You're seeing much more leather, with a club feel, or media rooms that are outfitted as man space."

Why are so many men now seeking a room of their own? Some armchair sociologists speculate that it's part of a continuing backlash against women's entry into the public sphere, that as women claim top spots in places that were once all-male preserves, such as universities, golf courses and Capitol Hill, men are seeking space in their own homes. Others wonder whether some men are reacting to a sense that women are too dominant in their home lives, with their puttering and decorating and desire to slap a doily, knickknack or family photo onto every inch of open tabletop.

There's something about being around women that is "stigmatizing to men that's not the other way around," said Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University who is an expert on gender and communications. " 'You drive like a woman,' 'You throw like a girl,' there's a lot of cultural symbolism. Women, on the other hand, may find men's presence unwelcome but not stigmatizing."

Or perhaps this is just another way affluent people can justify a larger house, said real estate agent Mark Gude of DCRealEstate.com. For most families, living space is at a premium and it is shared.

"If Dad wants his own space, he can go sit out in the pickup," Gude said.

For real estate developer Scott McElhaney, co-owner of Arlington Property Ventures, his special preserve is what he calls his "smoking porch," a partly covered balcony on the second floor of his Arlington house.