The design of New Haven’s Center Church on the Green, characterized by graceful restraint and classical proportion, established city resident, architect, and civil engineer Ithiel Town as a leader of American architecture in 1814. The same neoclassical style animates this later portrait bust of Town, carved by Chauncey Bradley Ives, a native of nearby Hamden, Connecticut. Town’s likeness is set atop the volume Antiquities of Athens, originally published in 1762, as well as a sample of the crisscross truss invented by Town, which revolutionized bridge construction in the United States. Town worked in other styles; his more ornate design for Center Church’s gothic neighbor, Trinity Church, reflects the eclectic tastes of the early nineteenth century.