Local Landscape Designer Elizabeth Theiler Martin Dies at 85

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December 9, 2024

By Rick Pezzullo—

Elizabeth Theiler Martin, a local landscape designer and active environmentalist, died Nov. 19. She was 85.

She grew up in Hastings-on-Hudson, the only child of Lillian Graham and Max Theiler, a medical researcher who won the Nobel Prize for his work developing the yellow fever vaccine. Dance classes as a child led, after The Masters School, to making dances for others including the choreography for Gilbert & Sullivan and Hasty Pudding shows at Harvard, where she graduated in the class of 1960.

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She went on to study with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, among others, and formed Elizabeth Martin & Company, which performed site-specific works in Boston. In the 1960s, she was asked to choreograph a performance called “Riot,” which depicted a panel discussion that deteriorated into violence, using movement and freeze frames taken from photographs of riots after Martin Luther King’s assassination. It moved to New York, where it won an Obie. Despite its success, a newspaper strike prevented its planned move to Broadway.

After working as an arts consultant on the renewal of downtown Washington D.C., where she met Stephen Tilly, they moved to Hastings and then Dobbs Ferry. She apprenticed as a film editor intending to do documentaries but found more independence creating an animated film of her own. She fell in love with landscape design while working on a spec house and her own garden, then went on to earn a Landscape Design Certificate from the NY Botanical Garden.

In 1985, she co-founded the Dobbs Ferry architectural firm STA Studio with her husband Tilly. As a board member of Friends of Dobbs Ferry Waterfront Park, she contributed countless hours to the renovation of the park.

“She was our go-to person for all things landscaping. She selected the sweet bay magnolias and willow oak trees that were purchased by the Friends. Her knowledge was unsurpassed, and when an email came from her I knew I’d learn something,” said Friends advisor Nancy Delmerico.

Friends founder Marie McKellar added, “Elizabeth was so helpful in getting the Friends group started, and then selecting appropriate trees for the park. She was a terrific human being and truly loved.”

Theiler Martin was promotion director, design muse, and co-developer of the Dobbs Ferry Playhouse. She also served on the boards of the Greater Hudson Heritage Network, Westchester County Historical Society, Lyndhurst, Echo Hills Counseling Center, and the Dobbs Ferry Tree Consortium.

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