Brownell Statue
Thomas Church Brownell is a bronze statue of founding Trinity President Thomas Church Brownell, located on the Main Quad and designed by Chauncey Ives. The statue stands 10 feet 6 inches tall and shows Brownell dressed in clerical vestments with his left hand holding a prayer book and his right arm outstretched as if pronouncing a blessing.
Chauncey B. Ives was an American neoclassical sculptor who was active from the 1840s until the post-Civil War era. He blended the styles of neoclassicism and 19th-century naturalism, both of which are evident in the Brownell statue.
Following Brownell’s death in 1865, his son-in-law Gordon Burnham commissioned Ives to create a statue of the former president. The statue originally was intended to be a memorial to have been placed on Brownell’s grave in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford. Ives began his work in 1866 while in Rome. In order to capture Brownell’s likeness, Ives worked with a portrait bust he had made of Brownell in 1860. (This bust now resides with the New York Historical Society.)
In 1868, the statue was transferred to Munich, Germany to be cast in bronze in the foundry of Ferdinand von Miller. In the same year, the finished statue was sent to Hartford, and rather than placing it at Brownell’s grave, Burnham made the decision to make the statue a gift to Trinity’s Trustees. The official dedication was delayed, however, until the school was able to obtain a pedestal to place the statue on. Hartford resident James G. Batterson was commissioned $5,000 to carve this pedestal, which stands 15 feet tall and is made of Quincy granite.
A ceremony was held on November 11, 1869 for the statue's unveiling at its original location on the Old Campus, overlooking Bushnell Park. When Trinity moved to the Summit Campus in 1878, the statue was re-erected on the Main Quad where it stands now, adjacent to the Long Walk.