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WESTFIELD, NJ — Before there was “The Addams Family,” there was Westfield.
Cartoonist Charles Addams, who created the eccentric, fictional family, drew inspiration for his signature macabre style from the stately Victorian homes, historic cemetery and other landmarks in his New Jersey town.
Today the affluent community, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of Manhattan, has embraced its ghoulish legacy, honoring its darkly funny native son every October with AddamsFest.
Downtown storefront windows are transformed into temporary canvases for seasonal scenes featuring Gomez, Morticia, Wednesday, Pugsley and the rest of the family.
Throughout the month, there will be Addams-themed events, including an art show, a music and beer festival, a masquerade ball and a competition among homeowners for the most spectacular front lawn display.
“Everybody really gets into it,” said resident Kelly Heuschkel, whose young daughter dresses up, fittingly, as Wednesday Addams on Halloween. “I think people dress up more for Halloween here than they do for Christmas.”
Joy Fox was among the visitors who marveled that such a beautiful town could have inspired something so savage.
“It looks like a very nice suburb,” said the Cleveland, Ohio, resident as she passed Addams’ childhood home one recent evening. “I grew up watching the ‘Addams Family.'”
The month-long festival, which is now in its ninth year, was launched when the town’s former mayor was looking for something unique to Westfield to celebrate the town.
Dawn Mackey, a former city councilor who helped found AddamsFest, admits there was some initial skepticism when the idea of leaning into the Addams lore was first floated.
“A lot of people didn’t even know he was from here,” she said.
But Mackey said she knew the organizers had screwed up when a visiting family once waved her the three-stop Halloween itinerary: Salem, Massachusetts; Sleepy Hollow, New York, and Westfield.
“I felt it was time,” she said.
Mackey said it was pure “serendipity” that the festival was launched in 2018, the year before the release of the animated film “The Addams Family”, and its sequel in 2021.
The famous Netflix series “Wednesday”, which focused on the very independent daughter of the family, also helped introduce a new legion of fans to the scary family.
In addition to the events of the festival, visitors can take in some of the sights of the city on foot. A self-guided heritage trail covers landmarks that informed Addams’ art.
At Addams’ colonial-style childhood home, a historical marker says his grandmother lived in the attic and is believed to be the inspiration for the fictional Grandma Addams.
Nearby, on the street where the young Addams apparently walked to school, is a Victorian house that helped inspire the family’s elegant, gothic residence. A miniature version of the family’s fictional mansion sits in the middle of a pond in the center of town.
Further on, an old cemetery next to a white steeple church is filled with tombstones dating back to colonial times that officials say the young Addams frequented.
A historic movie theater with an old-time marquee will host an art exhibit featuring a selection of Addams’ works on loan from his family’s foundation, along with related pieces from local artists.
An entire section of a barn wall was also cut out and preserved to display a life-size skeleton drawing made by the young Addams.
“The entire barn was graffitied except for this piece,” Mackey explained. “It was like ten years after ten years, teenagers hanging out in this barn still had respect, even if they didn’t know who pulled this.
Mackey says Addams was ahead of her time, drawing strong female protagonists and fragile families that resonate generations later.
Addams spent most of his career as a cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine, which published many of his Addams Family cartoons, including his first, in 1938. He died in New York in 1988 at the age of 76.
At the Addams art show, Mackey pointed to a piece showing Wednesday and Pugsley waiting by the fireplace for Santa to come on Christmas. But instead of leaving out milk and cookies, the mischievous sisters light a fire to light Saint Nick as he comes down the chimney.
“Every whole town has secrets and a dark side. I think he saw that,” Mackey said of Addams. “To take the darkest parts of people and put a spin on it, that makes it funny instead of scary, and that’s what he did best.”
