The Journal Times Online - Racine, Wisconsin

Albert “Ollie” Adelman refused to be turned away at the door of Taliesin when he drove there to meet Frank Lloyd Wright without an appointment in 1948. Adelman, who was one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s surviving clients, died Friday January 13 in the house that Wright designed for he and his late wife, Edie, in Fox Point, north of Milwaukee. Adelman was 96. He had graciously opened his house up to Frank Lloyd Wright in Wisconsin for a special fund-raising event during the 2011 Wright and Like house tour.

The Adelmans were raising three children in a flat in Shorewood when they asked Wright to design a new home for them. “We needed a house. My wife said we have three kids and one bedroom...we can’t live this way,” Adelman recalled in December, 2008. “I said let me see what I can do.”

He had seen a picture of Wright in Life magazine that week. Not only did the Adelmans need a new home, but Ollie and his father also needed a new plant for their growing dry cleaning business. Adelman drove to Taliesin, and knocked on the door. “It was five degrees above zero.” He was asked if he had an appointment. “No, lady, but my kids aren’t happy, my wife’s not happy, my father’s not happy.”

Adelman was told that Wright would not see anyone who did not have an appointment. He stood his ground. “If that’s what you are telling me, I left my car running because it’s so damned cold. I’ll go see another architect.”

He was finally invited in for a 15 minute meeting. He left five hours later. “I made a friend.” Wright told him his fee was 10%. Most architects, Adelman said, charged 7%. “I didn’t say anything.”

He told Wright that the most they could spend on a house was $75,000. Two weeks later Wright presented sent them plans for a house that it was estimated would cost $350,000 to build. “I took it back to Wright and said, ‘I don’t think you got the message.’” Wright pledged to make the house smaller; the new plans were for a $250,000 home. “I said you have to be crazy. I told you twice.” He told Edie, “Dear, it was a good dream. We will go to Fox Point and sell the lot we bought.”

A few weeks later Adelman stopped to see his parents who were on vacation at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix. He was sitting at the pool when he heard someone greet him by name. It was Frank Lloyd Wright. Adelman apologized that Wright had done work for naught because he couldn’t afford the proposed house. Wright was not upset and replied, “I’m going to do something for you.” He took a piece of tissue paper and two crayons, and drew an outline of a house. “Now, Ollie, you take this home. Don’t go to fancy high-priced builders. I’ve cut it way down.”

Adelman replied, “God willing, I can have a house you design, but I’m just a laundry man.” Wright told him if he could get a contractor, he would send Adelman plans for the house. Adelman said, “Mr. Wright, I’ll do it.” And he did.

Adelman and Wright went back and forth about the cost and size of the house. In the end, “We got the house. It cost more than $75,000, but not much more.” They had the same struggle about building the laundry. “Our offer was $250,000, the first price was $750,000.” He decided to pass on the laundry plans, “A house is a house, a laundry is a laundry.” Instead the Adelmans bought five laundries in the area to get the space they needed, rather than building the more expensive plant Wright had designed for them. The new building would have been revolutionary, Adelman said, but few laundries were being built with the advent of Laundromats.

Adelman wrote his autobiography in 2004. The title was “All Things Are Possible.” The subtitle is more telling, as one reflects on the history of the design of the Adelman House, “Those Who Say It Cannot Be Done Are Usually Interrupted by Someone Else Doing It.”

As for the house? “I’ve been here 60 years. I don’t want to sell it,” Adelman said, sitting in the living room one winter evening in 2008. That house is where he died Friday.