His father encouraged him to draw, and Addams did cartoons for the Westfield High School yearbook, Weathervane. Ĭharles Addams Fine Arts Hall Gate showing Thing from The Addams Family One friend said of him: 'His sense of humor was a little different from everybody else's.' He was also artistically inclined, 'drawing with a happy vengeance', according to a biographer.

College Hall, the oldest building on the current campus of the University of Pennsylvania, where Addams studied, was also an inspiration for the mansion. In the cartoons, his ghoulish creations lived on Cemetery Ridge with a dreadful view.Ī house on Elm Street and another on Dudley Avenue – into which police once caught him breaking and entering – are said to be the inspiration for the Addams Family mansion in his cartoons. Īddams would enjoy the Presbyterian Cemetery on Mountain Avenue in Westfield as a child, where – according to author and Addams expert Ron MacCloskey – he would wonder what it was like to be dead. presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, despite the different spellings of their last names, and was a first cousin twice removed to noted social reformer Jane Addams. (née Spear 1879–1943) and Charles Huey Addams (1873–1932), a piano company executive who had studied to be an architect, he was known as 'something of a rascal around the neighborhood' as childhood friends recalled. Some of his recurring characters became known as the Addams Family, and were subsequently popularized through various adaptations.Īddams was born in Westfield, New Jersey. Charles Samuel Addams (Janu– September 29, 1988) was an American cartoonist known for his darkly humorous and macabre characters, signing the cartoons as Chas Addams.

The original addams family comics