MySource:BobC/A New Fine Arts Hall is a Charles Addams Memorial

A New Fine Arts Hall is a Charles Addams Memorial

The Lady Colyton, who was the wife of the late New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams, has announced that she will create a new fine arts building at Penn to be known as the Charles Addams Fine Arts Hall—transforming what was once the Asbury Methodist Church, a landmark Victorian Gothic and Romanesque building on Chestnut Street between 33rd and 34th Streets.

“It’s a building that Charles Addams would have loved,” Lady Colyton said. “It serves as a measure of gratitude to Charles for his unique and great contribution in the field of graphic art and a comic genre that will always bear his name. One hopes it will inspire future generations of fine arts students.”

President Judith Rodin praised Lady Colyton’s vision and generosity, and called the gift a “tribute to the artist whose gothic characters played out their dramas to the endless delight of us all.”

Plans are for an exterior essentially unchanged, but an interior completely transformed through use of the nave and sanctuary to create studios, classrooms, and a gallery. The gallery will exhibit a retrospective of Charles Addams’ work when it opens in two years. The large Gothic stained glass windows on the south wall will be preserved while the side windows will be replaced with translucent glass. Skylights will flood studios and classrooms with natural light. Renovation of the building is to begin shortly and be completed by 1997.

Charles Addams graduated from Penn with a fine arts degree in 1934. In 1980 Penn awarded him an honorary doctor of fine arts degree, citing him as “Richly deserving of recognition for the finite time he did here at Pennsylvania in the thirties and the infinite pleasure he has given to generations of monster-lovers ever since, this noted—if not notorious—member of the University Family is now slated to receive from their hand the honorary degree.”

His cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker for nearly half a century, and they inspired not only the long-running television show The Addams Family — making Morticia, Gomez, Lurch, and Uncle Fester household names—but also motion picture recreations of the Family and its “values.”

Following his death in 1988, Lady Colyton endowed the Charles Addams Memorial Prize of $10,000, awarded annually to the outstanding student in fine arts at Penn.

Lady Colyton is married to The Right Honorable Lord Colyton, former diplomat and member of Sir Winston Churchill’s government. He is a descendant of Francis Hopkinson, who signed the Declaration of Independence and was the first graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Class of 1757, the very first graduating class of the University.