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Arts and Letters

A partial exterior view of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Mission

Arts and Letters is an honor society of artists, architects, composers, and writers who foster and sustain interest in the arts. Our 300 members distribute over $1.2 million in awards annually; fund concerts and new works of musical theater; purchase and commission contemporary art for donation to museums across the country; and present exhibitions, talks, and events for the public at our historic buildings in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City.

History

A black and white photograph of a room. To the left, a marble statue of a woman stands beside a bookcase. To the right, a chair and large globe are pictured beside a window.
Library, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1993. Photo: Cervin Robinson

Founding History

First known as the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898 for the “advancement of art and literature.” The Institute met for the first time in New York City in February 1899 and began electing members that fall. Architects, artists, writers, and composers of notable achievement were eligible, and membership was soon capped at 250. In 1913, President William Howard Taft signed an act of Congress incorporating the organization.

In 1904, the National Institute created the American Academy, a prestigious inner body of 50 members modeled on the Académie française. Only after being elected to the Institute was a member eligible for elevation to the Academy. This bicameral system of membership continued until 1993, when the Institute dissolved itself and all 250 members were enrolled in Arts and Letters. In 2020, the membership voted to amend the organization’s Charter and Bylaws to increase the membership from 250, where it had stood since 1908, to 300.

The activities of members include annual meetings and dinners, as well as opportunities to recognize and support other architects, artists, composers, and writers. Two member traditions that have endured throughout our history are the annual Ceremonial, when existing members induct new members and give awards and prizes to nonmember artists, and the reading of Tributes celebrating the life and work of deceased members.

A black and white photograph of a man painting on a hillside.
John Singer Sargent, 1905

Artists Supporting Artists

The history of Arts and Letters is one of artists across disciplines creating a community of mutual support and recognition. In addition to honoring their peers through election to membership, members support nonmember artists through awards, prizes, art purchases, and commissions.

This program of recognition began in 1909, when the Board of Directors inaugurated its highest honor, the Gold Medal. In an effort to reach a wider number of artists, this program expanded in 1941 and 1942 with the establishment of the annual Arts and Letters Awards and Award of Merit Medal. Additional awards have since been endowed through gifts and bequests or established by the Board of Directors. We now give over 70 awards and prizes in the fields of Architecture, Art, Literature, and Music.

In 1914, writer, historian, and member Archer M. Huntington established an endowment to support operations and subsequently donated the land in Washington Heights, on which he paid to construct Art and Letters’s buildings. Other members including James Merrill left significant bequests, while others such as Childe Hassam and Charles Ives gave more creative means of support. Hassam bequeathed over 400 artworks, the sales of which have been used to purchase works by living American artists for donation to museums across the United States. Ives’s widow, Harmony Ives, bequeathed the copyright and royalties from her husband’s music, which have funded over $4 million in awards to composers since 1970. More recent support has come from Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence and Jacob Lawrence, Catherine and Otto Luening, and Amber Lightfoot Walker. A complete list of major donors may be found on our support page.

A black and white photograph of the exterior of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In front of the building, building materials sit in the road.
American Academy of Arts and Letters, West 155th Street, 1922

Buildings and Architecture

Arts and Letters occupies three buildings on the west end of Audubon Terrace in Washington Heights. Its original Beaux Arts building was completed in 1923 and designed by member William Mitchell Kendall, from the architecture firm McKim, Mead, & White; it houses the Library, Members’ Room, galleries, and staff offices. A second building, designed by member Cass Gilbert, was completed in 1930, and includes a 730-seat auditorium and skylit exhibition gallery. Construction of both buildings was funded by writer, historian, and member Archer M. Huntington, who was responsible for the development of Audubon Terrace as a cultural complex.

In 2005, Arts and Letters purchased the former headquarters of the American Numismatic Society, located in a neighboring building on Audubon Terrace. Architect James Vincent Czajka, in consultation with member Henry N. Cobb and Michael Flynn of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, designed a glass link to connect this building with the original buildings. The former Numismatic Society building houses galleries and a permanent installation of composer Charles Ives’s studio.

In 2019, the Board of Directors approved a multiphase plan for major capital improvements across Art and Letters’s buildings. These improvements will enable us to be open to the public year-round with arts programming and events beginning in Fall 2024.

A black and white photograph shows a man in a white work coat sitting on a stepladder and looking down to his two sons beside him. Behind these figures, is a sculpture of a man on a horse standing on a workbench.
Henry M. Shrady in his studio with his sons, c. 1911

Site History

Arts and Letters is located in Lenapehoking, the ancestral homeland of the Lenape. Arts and Letters’s current site is located in the area that the Lenape called Penadnic. Located off the Wickquasgeck Trail (present-day St Nicholas Avenue, and further downtown, Broadway), the site’s formerly rocky, wooded hills were used by the Lenape as hunting grounds; a seasonal fishing camp was located nearby along the banks of the Hudson River at present-day West 158th Street.

Dutch and British settlers displaced the region’s original inhabitants through a series of exploitative land transactions and violent encroachments during the 17th and early 18th centuries that resulted in forced mass migration. The incursions into Penadnic periodically erupted in bloodshed. Beginning in 1691, when Jan Dyckman purchased a large tract of land stretching north from present-day 155th Street, the site was owned by a succession of Dutch and British families who farmed the adjacent land while leaving the rocky hills largely unchanged.

From the 1850s until the early 1900s, the area between West 155th and 158th Streets, bordered by present-day Broadway and the Hudson River, became a residential enclave known as Audubon Park where mansions surrounded by lawns and flower gardens remained even as large new apartment buildings rose up on the surrounding streets. Audubon Park was first developed by the family of naturalist John James Audubon, who purchased the 14-acre estate in 1841 with the proceeds from the publication of The Birds of America. Recent scholarship has brought attention to Audubon as an enslaver and anti-abolitionist, which has led to a public reconsideration of his legacy.

In 1904, the same year the subway station opened at West 157th Street and Broadway, the writer, historian, and Arts and Letters member Archer M. Huntington purchased a section of land in Audubon Park between West 155th Street and present-day West 156th Street. Later that year he began construction of the Hispanic Society Library and Museum, the first of the six cultural institutions he would bring there over the next 20 years. The name Audubon Terrace was given to the complex in the 1940s.

A black and white photograph of a dark stairwell that leads up to the arched doorway of a brightly lit room. Framed objects hang along the stairwell walls and within the room atop the stairs.
Stairwell, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1993. Photo: Cervin Robinson

Further Reading

George Bird Grinnell. Audubon Park: The History of the Site of the Hispanic Society of America and Neighboring Institutions. New York: Hispanic Society of America, 1927.

Landmarks Preservation Commission. Audubon Terrace: Historic District Designation Report, 1979.

Portraits from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Washington, DC: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1987.

John Updike, ed. A Century of Arts and Letters: The History of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Letters as Told, Decade by Decade, by Eleven Members. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Landmarks Preservation Commission. Audubon Park: Historic District Designation Report, 2009.

Matthew Spady. The Neighborhood that Manhattan Forgot: Audubon Park and the Families Who Shaped It. New York: Fordham University Press, 2020.

A black and white photograph shows the exterior of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. An American flag hangs above the entrance and there is a partially legible inscription on the building.
A neat, black and white architectural drawing of a two-story building.
A black and white photograph of the American Academy of Arts and Letters building, set in between two other buildings made with darker stone. Two 1920s-era cars are parked in the street in front of the building. Behind the buildings is the Hudson River and surrounding hills in the distance.
A black and white photograph of seven people posing beside a marble statue of a woman.
A black and white photograph of a room. To the left, a marble statue of a woman stands beside a bookcase. To the right, a chair and large globe are pictured beside a window.
A black and white photograph of a room containing neat rows of chairs.
A group of people posing for a photograph. In the front, a man and woman sit beside each other in chairs. Three women and two men stand behind them.
A black and white photograph of the exterior of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In front of the building, building materials sit in the road.
A black and white photograph shows a celebration on the Audubon Terrace from above. Within the skewed image, groups stand amidst round tables with decorative umbrellas.
A black and white photograph of a group of men wearing suits and top hats looking towards two men setting a stone atop a waist high wall.
A black and white photograph shows three men in a room with a bookcase. An old man with a mustache sits and stares at the camera as his hand is cast in plaster by another man. Behind them a man in a suit gazes down toward the cast.
A black and white photograph shows a man in a white work coat sitting on a stepladder and looking down to his two sons beside him. Behind these figures, is a sculpture of a man on a horse standing on a workbench.
A black and white photograph of a dark stairwell that leads up to the arched doorway of a brightly lit room. Framed objects hang along the stairwell walls and within the room atop the stairs.
A black and white photograph of a man painting on a hillside.
A black and white photograph of two older men smiling as they walk beside each other in Audubon Terrace.
A black and white photograph of two men in conversation. On the left, Tony Kushner laughs as Edward Albee gestures with his hands.
A black and white photograph of four people dressed in coats posing beneath a subway mosaic displaying "157th Street." Graffiti is visible on the surrounding subway tiles.
A black and white photograph of Arts and Letters's neoclassical building with cranes and other building materials visible in the foreground.
A man and a woman seen in closeup with other event attendees in background
A three-story house surrounded by a lawn and gardens overlooks the Hudson River. Tall apartment buildings are visible in the background.
Four people stand together in a row smiling at the camera. Other event attendees ascend a staircase visible behind them.
Sculptures and paintings installed in a large gallery whose ceiling is a skylight. Garlands of greenery also adorn the walls.
A building with large windows and open bronze doors faces a brick terrace. Sculptures adorn the facade and the center of the terrace. Flags from different countries are suspended across the terrace and blow in the breeze.
A library filled with several dozen people seated at round dining tables
Photograph of sculptures on pedastals in a gallery whose walls are lined with a curtain
composite image showing a busy intersection with people and cars in the street in front of a complex of buildings
A man and woman stand next to a wooden sculpture of a seated man in a galler
A man walks in front of an audience seated on the floor in a library
A carpenter shop filled with materials and tools. A man works in the background.
American Academy of Arts and Letters, West 155th Street, c. 1930
West 155th Street facade of American Academy of Arts and Letters building, c. 1920. Rendering: William Mitchell Kendall, office of McKim, Mead & White
American Academy of Arts and Letters, West 156th Street, 1930
Richard Rodgers Awards Committee, 2009. Seated: Lynn Ahrens; standing from left: John Weidman, Stephen Sondheim, Lin-Manuel Miranda, David Ives, Jeanine Tesori, Sheldon Harnick
Library, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1993. Photo: Cervin Robinson
Members’ Room, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1993. Photo: Cervin Robinson
Art Committee, 2005. Seated from left: Kiki Smith, Wolf Kahn; standing from left: Yvonne Jacquette, Kenneth Snelson, Philip Pearlstein, Richard Artschwager, Catherine Murphy. Photo: Benjamin Dimmitt
American Academy of Arts and Letters, West 155th Street, 1922
Ceremonial, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1952
Laying of American Academy of Arts and Letters cornerstone on Audubon Terrace, November 19, 1921. Photo: Paul Thompson Photos
Edwin Howland Blashfield sitting for a plaster cast of his hand, c. 1920s
Henry M. Shrady in his studio with his sons, c. 1911
Stairwell, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1993. Photo: Cervin Robinson
John Singer Sargent, 1905
Paul Resika and Philip Pearlstein, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2014
Tony Kushner and Edward Albee, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2006. Photo: Dorothy Alexander
Meeting to install American Academy of Art and Letters directional signage at 157th Street subway station, 1979. From left: Margaret Mills (Executive Director), Ralph Ellison, Hortense Calisher, I. M. Pei. Photo: Christina Wohler
Terrace facade of American Academy of Arts and Letters building under construction, January 17, 1930
Ceremonial, 1959. From left: Arthur Miller (Gold Medal in Drama) and Marilyn Monroe. Photo: Ray Shorr
View looking south from Riverside Drive and West 160th Street, 1926
Ceremonial, 1944. From left: S. S. McClure (Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts), Willa Cather (Gold Medal in Fiction), Theodore Dreiser (Award of Merit Medal in the Novel), and Paul Robeson (Medal for Spoken Language)
Art Gallery inaugural exhibition of works by American Academy of Arts and Letters members, November 13, 1930–May 15, 1931
Terrace facade during the opening of the Art Gallery inaugural exhibition of works by American Academy of Arts and Letters members, November 13, 1930
Annual Meeting of American Academy of Arts and Letters honoring centenary of Edmund Clarence Stedman’s birth, November 8, 1933
Exhibition of sculpture by Anna Hyatt Huntington, November 12, 1936–May 2, 1937
Photomontage of Audubon Terrace from Broadway, c. 1925. Photo: Byron Company
Marisol Escobar and Jacques Barzun with Marisol’s sculpture My Father (1977) at Ceremonial, 1978. Photo: Michael Hintlian
Charles Ives Centennial Festival, 1974
American Academy of Arts and Letters carpenter shop, 1937
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Contact

American Academy of Arts and Letters

Audubon Terrace New York, NY 10032

Galleries Audubon Terrace Broadway between West 155 and 156 Streets New York, NY 10032

Thursday through Sunday, 12-6pm

Office 633 West 155 Street New York, NY 10032

Office open by appointment


Galleries Audubon Terrace Broadway between West 155 and 156 Streets New York, NY 10032

Thursday through Sunday, 12-6pm

Office 633 West 155 Street New York, NY 10032

Office open by appointment

(212) 368-5900
info@artsandletters.org