Letters. The combined Academy/Institute structure had a maximum of 250 living U.S. citizens as members, plus up to 75 foreign composers, artists, and writers as honorary members. It also established the annual Witter Bynner Poetry Prize in 1980 to support young poets. The election of foreign honorary members persisted until 1993, when it was abandoned. Federally chartered corporation The Academy holds a Congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code (42 USC 20301 et seq.), making it one of the country's comparatively rare "Title 36" corporations. The 1916 statute of incorporation established this institution among a small number of other similarly chartered patriotic and national organizations. The federal incorporation was originally construed primarily as an honor. The special recognition neither implies nor accords Congress any special control over the Academy, which functions independently. Active sponsors of Congressional action were Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and former President Theodore Roosevelt. The process that led to the creation of this federal charter was controversial and the first attempt to gain the charter in 1910 failed. Lodge reintroduced legislation, which passed the Senate in 1913. The Academy was incorporated under the laws of the State of New York in 1914, which resulted in Congressional approval in 1916. Buildings The Academy occupies three buildings on the west end of the Audubon Terrace complex created by Archer M. Huntington, the heir to the Southern Pacific Railroad fortune and a noted philanthropist. To help convince the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, which were separate but related organizations at the time, to move to the complex, Huntington established building funds and endowments for both. The first building, on the complex's south side, along West 155th Street, was designed by William M. Kendall of McKim, Mead & White; Kendall was also a member of the Academy. This Anglo-Italian Renaissance administration building was designed in 1921 and opened in 1923. On the north side, another building housing an auditorium and gallery was designed by Cass Gilbert, also an Academy member, and built in 1928-30. These additions to the complex necessitated considerable alterations to the Audubon Terrace plaza, which were designed by McKim, Mead & White. In 2007, the American Numismatic Society, which had occupied a Charles P. Huntington-designed building immediately to the east of the Academy's original building, vacated that space to move to smaller quarters downtown.