And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, Again
JANET W. FOSTER, a Columbia University architectural historian, is well versed in the nuances of the Dutch-American farmhouse, the slope of a Queen Anne, the hue of a Downingesque cottage.
She's also done a little design work herself.
Consider Ms. Foster's drape-drawstring roof, circa 1992. Its signature architectural feature involved tying the drawstring from her drapes to the corner of a blanket. Then she laid the blanket over the edges of walls made of pillows, creating the roof of a pillow fort designed for her two young sons.
"When you pull the cord, the blanket door rises," Ms. Foster explained. "When it was up, we played 'day.' When it was down, we played 'night.' "
And then her voice started to trail off.
"I'm tearing up," she said. "You never know when you're going to build your last fort."
Given that my two children are mere toddlers, I'm not worried yet about the last-fort problem. I'm still working on figuring out how to build a half-decent one, what with my severe deficit in engineering skills. I'm expert in the field of collapse. So I reached out to Ms. Foster and other architectural experts for help with constructing the perfect pillow-and-blanket structure.