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Are there any indications of the location of the Addams Family's house in the magazine, cartoons, various movies and tv shows, etc?

The only clue I remember is that in the (1965) TV show Gomez and Morticia mention governments which ruled the region before the USA did, and of course there are many other versions of The Addams Family to choose from.

Valorum
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M. A. Golding
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  • You've clearly done some good sleuthing, but that info should be contained in a self-answer. – Valorum Oct 08 '23 at 19:36
  • I'm also wondering about whether asking about every version of the Addams Family is necessarily a good thing. What if we get multiple conflicting answers about different properties? – Valorum Oct 08 '23 at 19:41
  • I thought that I wrote a longer answer with a few more details. but I guess that wasn't saved. – M. A. Golding Oct 09 '23 at 08:06
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    You wrote a much longer question. I trimmed it down because about 90% of it was answering the question asked. – Valorum Oct 09 '23 at 08:09

4 Answers4

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In the Netflix series Wednesday, the family is from New Jersey, as can be determined from the license plate of the car Lurch drives to Nevermore.

license plate

Marc Wilson
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I can joke and say that I sometimes passed the Addams family house when I was a child. The Ebenezer Maxwell mansion at 200 W. Tulpehocken Street, in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is sometimes called the "Charles Addams House" because of the belief it might be the inspiration for the Addams Family mansion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebenezer_Maxwell_House

Similarly, the people of Westfield, New Jersey, the childhood home of Charles Addams, can discuss which old Victorian house in town might be the inspiration for the Addams family mansion.

But I am not asking about real life inspirations for the fictional Addams family house. I am asking about the fictional locations of various incarnations of The Addams Family.

Different live action versions of The Addams Family may use different actors with different looks to portray characters, and may show the Addams family house with different exteriors and/or interiors, for example, and thus should happen in different fictional alternate universes.

Thus information from one version of The Addams Family might not be accurate in another version.

I was able to narrow down the fictional location of one version, The Addams Family novelization by Jack Sharkey (1965), by mention of previous rulers of their location in dialog between Gomez and Morticia.

When Gomez Addams tells Morticia Uncle Fester gets a letter from "the government", Morticia asks which one.

“That new one,” he said. “You know, the one that took over after my government, Los Conquistadores, got skunked.”

“Oh, yes, the United States!” said Morticia. “It’s always hard to remember who’s in charge around here. Aztecs, Amerindians, British, French—! It’s certainly a popular place.”

Ignoring the Aztecs as an exaggeration, I decided that:

the most probable locations for the Addams family in the Addams Family (1965) by Jack Sharkey, 1965, should be in the area around Parris Island, South Carolina, or the area around Jacksonville and Saint Augustine, Florida, or the area around Pensacola, Florida and Mobile, Alabama, or the area around Natchez, Mississippi. And the last three areas seem more probable because the USA acquired them directly from Spain.

That same chapter says that Uncle Fester served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. That might indicate Fester came from one of the 13 colonies, but he might have been a more or less foreign volunteer like Lafayette, von Steuben, Pulaski, etc.

https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/72521/which-places-in-the-usa-have-been-ruled-by-all-three-colonial-powers-british-f/72522#72522

Wikipedia says:

Charles Addams was first inspired by his hometown of Westfield, New Jersey, an area full of ornate Victorian mansions and archaic graveyards.5 In the original comics series they live in a gothic house on Cemetery Ridge. According to the television series, the residence is a gloomy mansion adjacent to a cemetery and a swamp located in an unspecified American town. In the musical (first shown in Chicago in 2009), the house is located in Central Park.[6] In the 2019 film, the Addamses live in an abandoned asylum located in the outskirts of the state of New Jersey which is haunted by a disembodied resident who demands the property to remain undisturbed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Addams_Family#Premise_and_background

By coincidence, one possible location of the 2019 film, in northeastern New Jersey, would be near one fictional location of Gotham City, and another possible location in southwestern New Jersey, would be near another fictional location of Gotham City.

And I think that there may be more clues to the locations of various incarnations of the Addams family.

Here is a link to a famous Charles Addams cartoon showing the Addamses about to pour a cauldron of liquid upon Christmas carolers at their front door.

https://imgur.com/iBT54Ap

Note the snow covered evergreen tree, the icicles, and the footprints of the carolers in the snow.

A similar scene is the pre credits scene in The Addams Family (1991).

If snow is seen on the ground in the area where they live in The Addams Family (1991), and its sequel Addams Family Values (1993) then they would be like the Charles Addams cartoons and probably not in the probable locations of The Addams Family novelization by Jack Sharkey (1965).

An image of the Addams family mansion in a scene from Wednesday is Missing or Scooby-doo Meets the Addams Family (1972) also shows what seems to be snow on the ground.

https://addamsfamily.fandom.com/wiki/Wednesday_Is_Missing

And I think that there may be many other bits of evidence of the locations in various versions of The Addams Family.

M. A. Golding
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In the 2019 The Addams Family film, it's shown that their iconic house is in New Jersey.

enter image description here

Valorum
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Here is a link a question and answer indicating an Iowa state flag is seen in a courtroom in The Addams Family (1991).

https://moviechat.org/tt0101272/The-Addams-Family/58c76c5f93cef4080d75cd72/City-in-the-background

M. A. Golding
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    Can you provide a screenshot? Just linking to 'someone on the internet' saying that there might be a flag in a particular scene isn't much use. – Valorum Oct 27 '23 at 05:35