She can't really explain it, but from the time she was a child living in the Canadian province of New Brunswick, Lyn Steinberg always dreamed of a cottage, her own tiny space where she could dream her dreams, think, create, and simply exhale.
But her dream was deferred for a long time.
She got married. They moved from Boston to Sacramento to Wynnewood for her husband David's medical training. They had five children, and she juggled launching her own Tromp L'Oeil mural company with her career as a sexual assault nurse examiner working with rape victims.
Then last spring, when an old tree in the backyard of their 19th-century farmhouse in Moorestown needed to be taken down, a spot was cleared - and a cottage was born.
"I had imagined this place so many times, but the reality is so much better," Steinberg, 48, said. "This is my own little paradise."
It was in 1926 that Virginia Woolf posited that women needed "A Room of One's Own," the title of an extended essay that she wrote after delivering a speech at a prestigious English university. Comparing the elaborate men's facilities with the far more modest ones for women, she suggested that "a room of one's own" was essential to the creative spirit.
Yet in a society where man cave is a household term - and a household necessity - the modern building industry has yet to offer respite for women.
"We know that women drive home sales and we know that women want spaces of their own," said Stephen Melman, director of economic services for the National Association of Home Builders. But it's been hard, he said, to respond in this market.
Mary Anderson is one person already responding to the call. A builder taking a recession-related hiatus to work in marketing for Tim Schaeffer Communities in West Berlin, Anderson has seen to it that each of the company's Hammonton townhouses has a "retreat room," a small space off the foyer with a woman in mind.
"I've heard too many women say, 'I need some space to get away' " said Anderson, who gives her boss design input. ". . . We're going to see how this little nook, decorated for a woman, will appeal."
In the meantime, women are taking matters into their own hands - creating untraditional spaces that cater to their need for quiet and reflection.
For Renee Reese, 35, her space is the inner recesses of her master bedroom closet.
Reese, a fashion and image consultant, is the wife of former Eagles linebacker Ike Reese and the mother of Elijah, 6, Jada, 4, and an 18-year-old stepson, Mike. Her life is admittedly jammed, so when the couple built their three-story home in Clarksboro, Gloucester County, in 2007, Reese wanted and needed a retreat. And when the home was designed with lots of master-bedroom closet space, she got it.
With the help of New York interior designer Bridget Nisivoccia, Reese has a small private kingdom. Flowers, books, candles - even a curtained window - make this a special retreat just a few steps from the rest of the household.
"I get my best creative ideas just sitting here," said Reese. "The kids know this is off-limits, Ike has plenty of his own closet space, and this is where I start my day, and sometimes end it. This is just my space to be at peace."
For Barbara Patrick, the need for a sanctuary stemmed from physical problems. Semiretired from her long career as an English professor at Rowan University in Glassboro, the 46-year-old mother of a 6-year-old son was in chronic pain from a complex herniated disk. She felt relief, physically and emotionally, only when she was in water.
Living in East Greenwich Township, Gloucester County, in a house that dates back to 1850, Patrick and her husband, Arthur Stack, felt themselves to be stewards of the home's history. Their goal was a structure that somehow combined the practicality of a lap pool with the blended aesthetics of modernity, a bit of Zen spirituality and a New York loft feel thrown into the mix.
Because both of her parents were ministers, Patrick also urged her architect to try for the overall look and feel of a chapel.
No small order. But architect Neil K. Johnson had recently transformed a South Jersey historic building's basketball gym into a grand ballroom, so he well understood the complexities of the project.
Today, Patrick has her sanctuary - a 21-by-55-foot structure enclosing a 9-by-42-foot lap pool. It is attached to the side of her home and designed on the outside to resemble a carriage house.
Inside are a timbered ceiling reminiscent of an old barn and an upstairs yoga area - all harmoniously blended with her lap pool.
"When I step inside here, I feel instant peace and calm," Patrick says. "I don't just swim here. I nourish my soul. And I experience silence like nowhere else in the world."
Steinberg's room of her own is literally that. A 10-by-14-foot space with a tiny loft, it is decorated with her easel, found birds' nests, a well-used spinning wheel for the wool collected when the family raised sheep in Sacramento, and her own painting handiwork.
"I try to get out here every day," Steinberg said, "and it's made a huge difference in my life."