The Albert and Edith Adelman House is a Frank Lloyd Wright designed Usonian home in Fox Point, Wisconsin.
Albert "Ollie" Adelman was just 32 years old and had three young sons (Lynn, Gary & Craig) when he asked Frank Lloyd Wright to design an affordable home in 1948. Albert was the son of Benjamin Adelman, founder of a large laundry and dry cleaning business in the Milwaukee area. Wright designed a number of projects for the Adelman family, including a laundry plant, three homes for Benjamin, and two for Albert. Of these, only this house and the Benjamin Adelman Residence in Phoenix (1951), were actually built.
Although the house’s long, low profile recalls Wright’s turn-of-the-century Prairie school homes, it also embodies Wright’s Usonian ideals for low-maintenance buildings. It is built of buff-colored concrete block and cypress, neither of which requires paint or plaster. The roof is covered with hand split cedar shakes and has wide overhangs. Wright also designed many of the interior furnishings. The 170-foot (52 m) long home has five bedrooms on one end, a kitchen and dining room at the other end, and a large living/reception area in the center. A covered walkway leads from the end of the house to the garage, forming an "L" shape.
This house is built on a long, 2.5-acre (1 ha) lot, and set back well from the road, at the end of a long, winding drive. The lot has a deep, wooded ravine at one end. The house sits at the rear of the lot, overlooking the ravine, and faces south/southeast to take maximum advantage of natural light.
Famous quotes containing the words edith and/or house:
“If you’re an actor, a real actor, you’ve got to be on the stage. But you mustn’t go on the stage unless it’s absolutely the only thing you can do.”
—Dame Edith Evans (1888–1976)
“If the main timbers in the house are not straight, the smaller timbers will be unsafe; and if the smaller timbers are not straight, the house will fall.”
—Chinese proverb.