Sunday Pastries With the Dead 38

Strolling the est. 1720 New Jersey cemetery that inspired "The Addams Family."

Gomez, Morticia, Wednesday, Pugsley, Uncle Fester, Thing, and the rest of the Addams Family gang may hail from Cemetery Ridge, but their roots run deep in Westfield, New Jersey; it’s where their creator Charles Addams grew up. The town’s Victorian mansions and old cemetery served as a direct inspiration for Addams’ hit New Yorker cartoon series, which started as single-panel comics in the late 1930s and grew into a pop culture juggernaut.

There’s a reason his creation is ubiquitous—between the original comics, the 1960s TV show, the 1990s film series, the video game adaptations, the 2010 musical, and the recent 2022 Netflix show, it’s hard not to recognize the creepy, kooky black-clad family at the drop of a snap, snap. But we’re here to rewind about 100 years—to the 1920s when Charles was a precocious pre-teen causing mischief on the streets of Westfield. For a very special Sunday Pastries, we’re taking a walk in his pint-sized shoes…

Left: Charles Addams’ childhood home at 522 Elm Street. Right: the dwelling at 411 Elm Street that Charles used as inspiration for the Addams family house.

Charles grew up at 522 Elm Street (Freddy Krueger voice: “Every town has an Elm Street!”) and strolled past many stately historical homes during his short daily walk to school. The gorgeous white mansard-roofed dwelling at 411 Elm Street, in particular, caught his eye—this became the inspiration for the Addams house in his comics. Rumor has it, at one point Charles was caught breaking into an old manse on either Elm or the intersecting Dudley Avenue to study its layout and architecture for his sketches. I’m tickled by the idea that this kid had no intention to rob, just to research. A true kindred spirit.

Charles spent almost every day at the nearby est. 1720 Presbyterian Church Burial Grounds, which are an 11-minute walk from his home. He said he thought often about what it was like to be dead when he sat among the almost 1,500 memorials, and one trip through the cemetery makes it easy to see why. Common 1700s memento mori headstone symbols abound, as do design flourishes that carried over into his illustration aesthetic. I have a theory that Thing came from Charles seeing the disembodied hand pointing up symbol on a gravestone; though I couldn’t find one in this cemetery, I’m certain the popular design existed there when he frequented it and its example has since been damaged or removed.

To say this cemetery is overwhelming is quite an understatement. I can see why Charles spent so much time here—I could’ve devoted a full day or two to studying its numerous well-preserved examples of intricate colonial carving styles and symbols. What initially fascinated me was the plethora of soul effigies (representing the soul ascending to heaven), each with its own unique personality. I stared into their varying sets of unblinking eyes for longer than I care to admit.

I adore this gorgeous heart design found here; the carver surrounded them with early representations of flowers (lots of tulips) and topped them with winged effigies. Truly breathtaking work.

I also happened upon one of my white whale cemetery items: an exposed practice stone. Early carvers often had their apprentices hone their lettering skills on the lower portions of commissioned slabs (anything to save a buck), knowing they’d be buried beneath the ground and never seen. What they didn’t account for was erosion. If you’re lucky, you may happen upon one of these unearthed sections—I jumped up and down when I found this one (I like to think Charles was chuckling beside me). As you can see on the headstone (which is a seriously gorgeous and unique shape), the carving apprentice tried his hand at his vowels on the left side and either his name or a play on the deceased’s last name on the right side.

All the common memento mori (“remember you must die”) images are accounted for here, as well—from the death’s head to crossed bones (which inspired my finger tattoo) to an hourglass.

Original headstone shapes were meant to mirror a bed’s headboard (eternal rest, get it??), and each was also made with a smaller stone placed at the bottom of the grave to serve as the proverbial footboard. Most footstones have been tossed away by groundskeepers, so finding one intact is a rarity. There are several here—they generally bear the deceased’s initials and death date.

Some other common motifs accounted for on headstone tympanums here include flowers…

…monogrammed initials…

…sunbursts, urns, and rosettes. I also found a space-filler swirl that feels particularly Addams-esque.

And would an old New Jersey graveyard be complete without one of carver Jonathan Hand Osborn’s ostentatious signatures on a headstone tympanum? I love the way early New Jersey carver Ebenezer Price signed his name, as if his initials signify two lovers immortalizing their devotion in the bark of a tree. And I appreciate that Price’s apprentice Jonathan Acken’s signature is framed by crossed bones. Another white whale item I found here was this mistake stone—you can see on the far right where a word was spelled wrong or the lettering was cracked, and a section of the stone was carved out to accommodate the re-writing of “son.”

Westfield leans all the way into its spooky heritage—during the Halloween season, almost every shop on its main drag proudly bears an Addams-centric window display, and each October the town hosts a popular month-long celebration of their native son called Addamsfest.

Until next Sunday, fellow taphophiles!