Overview
History
Poe, displayed in front of the DJ booth
Accompanied claimed to be the city's first library dedicated purely to literature, and it set up in an elegant space at the back of the National Arts Club1. It began when Brooke Geahan, Iris Brooks and James Fuentes waltzed into the club on March 1, 2004, with the idea of building a cultural empire, a library and a magazine, and were granted their wish; Geahan subleased one of its suites1, 2.
Geahan kept the literature lively. At a 2008 party, a recently unearthed Edgar Allan Poe manuscript, Lady Irene, was on display in front of a DJ booth, and she had invited the actor Josh Lucas to read the poem to the assembled guests3.
By April 2011 the Observer was calling the Accompanied Literary Society defunct2. The National Arts Club carries on at 15 Gramercy Park South under the line “Art for All for Over 125 Years”4.
Sources
Researched October 2026.