Rolf Myller, an architect whose eclectic pursuits included writing children's books, puzzle books and guides to erotic games and Chinese food, died on Thursday [March 23, 2006] at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. He was 79 and lived on the Upper East Side.
The cause was Parkinson's disease, his family said.
A native of Nuremberg, Germany, Mr. Myller was educated in Athens and, after coming to the United States and serving with combat engineers in the Pacific, graduated in 1951 from Cornell with a major in architecture. His professional work took him to Africa to Greece to Israel, and back to New York, where he worked at the Department of General Services from 1989 to 1994. Until 1998 he was a docent at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
His most popular book was "How Big Is a Foot?" (1962), explaining relative sizes to children. Others included "The Bible Puzzle Book" (1977), based on biblical sayings, people and places; "Mazes" (1978), a collection of original labyrinths; and "Symbols and Their Meaning" (1978), a graphic overview of children's nonverbal communication.
He also wrote "Sweet & Sour: Uncle Rolf's Guide to Eating in New York's Chinatown" (1991); "Fantasex: A Book of Erotic Games For the Adult Couple" (1975), for which he used a pen name, Rolf Milonas; and several architectural manuals.
Mr. Myller is survived by his wife of 49 years, Lois Westerdahl
Myller; his mother, Liselotte Hirschmann Myller Kahn; two daughters,
Elyse Myller and Corinne Myller Caramanico, an art director at The New
York Times; a stepsister, Olivia Kahn, all of Manhattan; and two
grandsons.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company