In the Hartford, Connecticut, home where the great American author Mark Twain lived from 1871 to 1891, a billiards room occupied the entire top floor.
Twain used the room – which his wife and children were barred from entering – exclusively to drink, smoke and shoot pool with his male cohorts, as well as write and escape family life.
As defined by Merriam-Webster, a man cave is “a room or space (as in a basement) designed according to the taste of the man of the house to be used as his personal area for hobbies and leisure activities.”
Though the man cave concept has become a topic of social and psychological discourse, explicitly male spaces have existed in some capacity for centuries.
Today, the at-home man cave is created possibly to therapeutically re-enforce male identity, as a 2014 study out of California State University entitled “Mancaves and masculinity” suggests, and is defined by the tastes of its occupant.
That means a basement filled with firearms and trophies is as much a man cave as an attic space walled with flat-screen TVs fixed on sports channels.
They can be elaborate – one New Zealand man built a $50,000 solar-powered “Skysphere” in a field complete with a fingerprint lock, high-speed Internet and a platform for stargazing.
Or they can be primitive: Ivo Zdarsky, who escaped from Communist Czechoslovakia 30 years ago in a handmade aircraft, converted an airplane hangar into a one-room home in rural Utah.
In Durango, Alex Kogan of Kogan Builders said he has built man caves in custom homes since 1999 and had three under construction in recent months.
“I’ve seen a lot of them post-recession,” Kogan said. “Clearly, it’s gender-driven. Sometimes it’s flex space or the wife will use it, but more often than not, it’s about the guy’s hobby, whether it’s woodworking or car collecting. Oftentimes, it has an entertainment element.”
Kogan recently built a multi-use space near Baker’s Bridge, equipped with a game room, bar and garage where the owner stores an RV and works on cars.
There’s no trend in design, but he finds that permanent residents favor man caves over second-home owners who are rarely there to enjoy the cave in question.
Ben Nighthorse Campbell, retired U.S. senator and a cave dweller, has a lavish one at his Ignacio home that he started assembling five years ago. It stemmed from a “hair-brained scheme” to open a Route 66-themed cafe.
Campbell collected retro street signs, gas pumps and out-of-print B-movie posters, ultimately abandoning the restaurant idea but holding onto the memorabilia to decorate a 75- by 25-foot detached man cave next to his home at Nighthorse Ranch.
It was his wife, Linda’s, idea.
As a product of 1950s California, automobiles are Campbell’s fascination, so the cave has an old chopper and 1929 New York City fire truck, as well as a flat-screen TV, popcorn machine, trophies and photographs of him rubbing elbows with famous politicos and celebrities in his political heyday.
“If I want to watch football or shoot pool, I just go to my man cave,” said Campbell, who retreats there two or three times a week. “You start accumulating things and some people keep them locked up, but I’ve always wanted to enjoy my hobby.”
Other local custom builders and real estate agents say requests for manly grottoes have been on the decline post-Great Recession. Clients are now more calculated about their high-end projects, favoring flex space or multi-use space over dedicated rooms.
Todd Sieger, a broker with Coldwell Banker, said man caves are the “new home theaters,” and has heard the offhand “that would make a great man cave” remark from clients touring a house.
“Before the recession, everyone wanted to have a home theater, and then people realized that there were probably better ways to spend their money and probably better areas of their home to put their money into,” Sieger said. “Now a lot of guys want man caves, and if you have a space, it is much more doable because it is generally a lot less expensive to build a man cave than it is to put a home theater in your house.”
But a man cave, because it is taste-driven, won’t necessarily add resale value. “I have not specifically built a man cave for anyone. However, I have built a barn for a workshop and storage for large ‘toys,’” Grant Siggins of Siggins Construction said. “It has been brought up during many discussions, but mostly with a comedic flair because the budget and space constraints do not allow a full-blown man cave. I expect that most man caves develop from repurposing other areas of the home as their lifestyle allows.”
Has he ever encountered a woman cave? One client’s storage space above the garage is intended to one day become a “she-cave.”
Brian Burke, a professor of psychology at Fort Lewis College, said there are a number of reasons attached to the impetus to build and retreat to a man cave, including the terror-management theory, which explains humanity’s drive to deal with inevitable mortality in symbolic ways.
“We invest in our culture, and part of culture in the 21st century is male-dominated, and there is pressure on men to buy into a certain male role,” Burke said. “A man cave is satisfying some primal need in their identity.”
If man caves are on the rise, it may be for the same reason Donald Trump is growing in popularity, Burke said. “In that particular case, there are many supporters who are uneducated, white men who see changes in the world and are scared,” he said. “There are people threatened by changes like women working more, because life is easier if they know exactly what their role is.”
Burke said his wife has a woman cave, but it’s not referred to as such. Rather, it’s her craft room, and the admittance rules are not as strict, as anyone can use the trampoline that’s kept there. “In terms of evolutionary psychology, the sense is men probably have a biological need to get away,” Burke said. “The man cave is a private space, and women evolved to be social creatures.
“All of that said, none of that authorizes it.”
jpace@durangoherald.com
