Georges-Eugène Haussmann
The cornerstone was laid by the French city planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann in 1859. It was designed in the Neo-Romanesque style by Paul-Eugène Lequeux and completed in 1863. Many valuable pieces of furniture and religious objects were donated by Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III, but were lost or damaged when the church was pillaged in the violence leading up to the Paris Commune in 1870.