[3] Tjaden completed the five-year course in four years and graduated from Cornell University in 1925 with a bachelor's degree in architecture at the age of 19.

[7] On the recommendation of a Cornell dean, Tjaden was hired by a Mineola, New York, architecture firm and began designing “distinctive homes for people of both significant and moderate means.”[3] From the 1920s to 1940s, Tjaden supervised the design of more than 400 homes in the Garden City area of Long Island, New York.

When you go through those neighborhoods now, the homes look different, but they all fit together.”[3] A Tudor mansion Tjaden designed in Woodmere, New York, for a distiller was featured in a 1935 edition of “Good Housekeeping” magazine.

[3] Tjaden's former home on 11th Street in Garden City is marked with a weather vane representing her career- a young woman holding a caliper and sitting astride a T-square.

[7] Once in Florida she ceased working on individual homes, but wrote a column for an architectural journal and designed garden apartments.