Jennifer Tatum.
Jennifer Tatum, 34
Project designer at Hill West Architects
When she was still an undergraduate, Jennifer Tatum and her father took a little trip to New York.
“As I walked around,” Tatum said, “I knew I had to live there.”
Tatum already had architecture on the brain. The Ohio native had taken a class in architecture in high school and decided to forgo golf scholarships at Division II schools to attend the University of Kentucky, which had an architecture program. Now, walking around Gotham, she worked out her next step: grad school at City College to become an architect.
Tatum started out at ARCT Architecture renovating condominiums and co-ops, working directly with contractors and their clients, and in 2015 decided to strike out for something bigger. That ended up being Hill West, where she worked on residential projects that mixed some of the swankiest apartments in the city with affordable units that typically get short shrift from developers and architects.
“I really focus on giving the same quality to affordable as market-rate,” said Tatum. “It’s really a puzzle” finding the right mix of the two.
Since landing at Hill West, she has worked with some of the biggest names in architecture and development.
Tatum has spent a lot of her time at Hill West working on unit layout and design on a variety of projects. These include Olympia Dumbo, Fortis Property Group’s 76-unit condominium at 30 Front Street that’s one of the tallest residential buildings in Brooklyn; 130 William, a 66-story, 800-foot-tall high-rise that was designed by Sir David Adjaye; 11 Hoyt, the Tishman Speyer-developed, Studio Gang-designed tower in Downtown Brooklyn; and 14-16 Fifth Avenue, the 18-story, 15-unit condo under construction in NoMad by Madison Realty Capital designed by Robert A.M. Stern.
“It can be intimidating going into these meetings and there’s an architect there you’ve learned about in school,” Tatum said. “I’ve been learning how to assert myself and find my voice.” —M.G.
