Olive Tjaden: Garden City Trailblazer

G A R D EN CITY TR A ILBLAZER

STORY AND PHOTOS BY SUZIE ALVEY, FORMER VILLAGE HISTORIAN

There are some impressive structures to look at as one is driving from Cherry Valley Avenue onto Eleventh Street: beautiful homes, the Waterworks and The Garden City Historical Society’s A.T. Stewart building. There is an equally impressive home tucked away on the right side at 104 Eleventh Street that one might miss if they’re admiring the view on the left.

Olive Frances Tjaden (pronounced “jodden”) designed and built her home on a rise at 104 Eleventh Street. It’s a “French Chateau” style with a Tudor feel, with Belgian bricks on the facade. She had plenty of room to enjoy a suite by herself and also have large accommodations for her parents to live with her. The house served as an advertisement to all Tjaden’s friends and acquaintances of her talent and ability as an architect. Olive had parties and charity events on the lovely grounds for groups such as the Zonta Club, Cornell alumni and the Sunday School children of the Cathedral of the Incarnation, some of whom she taught. People admired the interior details with all the thought and planning that went

250 Stewart Avenue — Early Tjaden design and the most expensive. (2018)

66 Poplar Street — Her first building permit in 1926 when Tjaden was 22. (2018)

into such a magnificent house. What’s even more impressive about the home is that Olive Tjaden built it in 1928, at the age of 24. She was in business for only three years at that point.

The road to becoming an architect was quite a fast trajectory. In 1904, Olive was born into a family of architects and builders. She grew up in Brooklyn and Queens, graduated from Jamaica High School in 1921 and subsequently earned her bachelor’ s degree in architecture from the prestigious Cornell University by 1925, which should have taken her five years to complete. She was the only female in the program, typical for the time. After graduation, Tjaden worked for Richard T. Childs architecture company in Mineola for two years. She then opened an office at 109 Seventh Street in Garden City. Continuing in that same vein, she was awarded membership in the American Institute of Architects before the age of 30, being the only woman member for decades. By 1936, she had designed over 600 homes and commercial buildings in Garden City and other nearby towns. She worked with various builders and developers including the Garden City Company. The following year, she re-designed the former Gallant mansion on Stewart Avenue into the new location of the Garden City Community Church (since razed and across Whitehall Boulevard from the current one).

Tjaden loved designing homes and had a special marketing ability that men didn’t use: she knew what would appeal to women in homes, such as wider closets, book nooks, arched doorways and stained glass. Olive realized that women would be spending most of their time in their homes, so she wanted to make it a place of happiness for them. She remained feminine in a man’s profession but succeeded in getting commissions through her female contacts. Men underestimated the “women’s connection.”

According to the Olive Tjaden home list that Bill Bellmer, current Garden City Village Historian, organized, there were 209 designs for new houses that we are aware of, as of April 2019. It has been reported that Tjaden designed over 400 homes in town. (It’ s

a mystery where the other ones are.) The new home construction averaged $16,000 to build, with a low of $5,000 to $50,000 for the impressive 250 Stewart Avenue. 162 Tjaden-designed homes are in the Estates section, which is almost 80% of her known homes in Garden City. The Estates section was just being developed at that time. 44 are in the Eastern section, two are in the Central section and one is in the Western section, for a total of 209 houses. 66 Poplar was the first permit Olive obtained in 1926 when she was only 22. Her last building permit for Garden City was 11,12,14 and 15 Heath Place, all on the same day in 1941 when she was 37 years old.

During Tjaden’s time in Garden City, her designs of the 1920s were various styles, but mostly large, distinctive Tudor and colonial homes with stained glass windows, sometimes a balcony in front and using a combination of stone and brick on their facades, such as 176 Kilburn Road and 250 Stewart Avenue. Inside, there were sweeping staircases and special touches. Her 1930s and 1940s designs during the Depression and after featured more clean lines, usually in brick, without the stained glass, as in 110 and 112 Stratford Avenue. She also designed most of the homes on that block (Nassau Boulevard and Euston Road between Stewart and Stratford Avenues). (Arthur McKenna, who lived at 36 Wellington Road worked with her on some of the homes as an assistant.) Altogether, she designed more than 2,000 residential and commercial buildings on Long Island.

Olive Tjaden’s tenure came to an end in Garden City when she married Carl Johnson of Florida in 1945. Together, they lived in Fort Lauderdale and she continued to design the more modest and mid-century modern homes popular at the time, as in the architecture of 530 NE Eleventh Street, Fort Lauderdale. It was a strategic move on her part during the explosive post-WWII development in Florida. She designed more commercial buildings as well. The marriage lasted almost 25 years, until Carl unjustly claimed some of her designs were his; they divorced in 1969.

In her last 20 years of her life, Olive remained in Fort Lauderdale and married for the second time in 1978 to Roswell Charles Van Sickle, an inventor. She contributed a large donation for the refurbishment of a building at Cornell University, which was renamed in her honor in 1981. It was called Olive Tjaden Hall. She was also honored with the naming of the Van Sickle Art Gallery, also at Cornell. Tjaden passed away at 92.

If you think you have an Olive Tjaden home, please contact Suzie Alvey at suziealvey@gmail.com. (You can check your blueprints also.)

112 Stratford Avenue — Reminiscent of Tjaden’s later 1940s style in Garden City. (2018)

530 Northeast Eleventh Avenue, Fort

Lauderdale — Tjaden adapted to simpler Mid-Century Modern designs in Florida in the late 1940s and after. (2020) Olive Tjaden Hall, Cornell University — Dedicated to Tjaden after her large donation to her alma mater. (2017)