Join Project Manager Ashley Fedor and others on a tour of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an honor society of artists, architects, composers, and writers who foster and sustain interest in the arts.

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 of McKim, Mead, & White; it houses the Library, Members’ Room, galleries, and offices. A second building, designed by member Cass Gilbert, was completed in 1930 and includes an auditorium and exhibition gallery. Construction of both buildings was funded by writer, historian, and member Archer M. Huntington, who developed 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, began a multiphase plan for major capital improvements across Art and Letters’s buildings. On September 25, 2024, Arts and Letters opens 10,000 square feet of newly renovated galleries that will be free and open to the public with contemporary art programming.

We invite visitors with wheelchairs to enter through the garage to the left of our administrative entrance at 633 West 155 Street. There is an elevator, sized 36 inches deep and 34 inches wide, that reaches all levels of the building. Concrete ramps connect our buildings to the Arts and Letters terrace. Please note that the slopes of the garage entrance (14%) and hallway to the elevator (18%) are steeper than the ADA-recommended maximum. Please call (212) 368-5900 to arrange for a staff person to greet you.