Production notes

The film was shot on location in Manhattan, New York City, with locations including the Bow Bridge in Central Park, the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, Rockefeller Center, Delmonico's, Carl Schurz Park, and Bellevue Hospital.

Autumn in New York grossed $37.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $52.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $90.7 million, against a $45 million budget. In the United States and Canada, the film grossed $10.9 million from 2,255 theaters on its opening weekend, ranking fourth behind Hollow Man, Space Cowboys, and The Replacements.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 20% of 71 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "Although the film isn't as bad as feared (it wasn't pre-screened for reviews), it's not that good, either. Most noticable [sic] flaws are the sappy romantic cliches and lack of chemistry between Gere and Ryder." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 24 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale. Emanuel Levy of Variety gave the film a negative review, writing: "Autumn in New York is not a bad picture, just utterly banal. Desperately eager to register as a love affair in the mold of Hollywood's classics, Joan Chen's tediously sappy romantic meller is a kind of modern-day Love Story, with a 'new' twist: The casting of Richard Gere as a suave lover old enough to be Winona Ryder's father. MGM release, which went into theaters without a press screening, should enjoy a decent opening due to an aggressive marketing campaign targeted at young susceptible femmes, but tearjerker should be out of sight long before the season in which its pedestrian story is set." Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly wrote: "It's unfortunate that the film was directed by Joan Chen, who made the shattering Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl. The gentle humanism of Chen's touch is much in evidence here, yet she can't undo the howler at the movie's center – namely, that Gere's serial dater has conveniently chosen to fall in love with the one young woman in Manhattan who won't be around in six months anyway." Peter Rainer of New York wrote that Chen had a "lovely sense of film rhythm and a sophisticated eye for luxe effects, but she fell into a vat of goo and there's no climbing out of it".

The film was nominated for Worst Screen Couple (Gere and Ryder) at the 21st Golden Raspberry Awards, but lost the award to Battlefield Earth.