Eleanore Pettersen
| Eleanore Pettersen | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | 1916 Passaic, New Jersey |
| Died | January 15, 2003 (aged 86–87) Saddle River, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Cooper Union |
| Occupation | Architect |
Eleanore Kendall Pettersen (1916 – January 15, 2003) was an American architect. She was one of the first licensed female architects in New Jersey, where she operated a private practice from 1952 to 2002.
Pettersen was born in 1916 in Passaic, New Jersey. She studied architecture at Cooper Union in New York City, completing her certificate in 1941. She returned to Cooper Union in 1976 to finish her Bachelor of Architecture.
In 1950, Pettersen became one of the first women in New Jersey to be licensed as an architect. She began her career as a draftsman for, and later an apprentice to, Frank Lloyd Wright, working in Arizona and Wisconsin at Taliesin; she studied under Wright between 1941 and 1943. She lived in Tennessee from 1946 to 1950, during which time she designed power buildings and facilities for the Tennessee Valley Authority. In her early career, she also worked for the National Defense Research Committee, a job which involved analyzing the structures of enemy buildings.
Pettersen established a private architectural practice in Saddle River, New Jersey, in 1952—making her the first woman in the state to open an architectural firm—and maintained it until 2002. During those 50 years, she designed more than 600 projects, both residential and commercial.
Pettersen was primarily a residential architect. Perhaps her most famous work was a 1971 design of a 15-room house in Saddle River for businessman John Alford. Alford sold the house in 1981 to former U.S. president Richard Nixon, who lived there after resigning from politics. Pettersen also designed Bears Nest, a gated residential village in Park Ridge, New Jersey, where Nixon also lived after leaving Saddle River. She was licensed in six states other than New Jersey: Connecticut, Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, and North Carolina.
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