Background
He was born in Paris, son of architect Louis-Pierre Baltard and attended Lycée Henri IV.
He was born in Paris, son of architect Louis-Pierre Baltard and attended Lycée Henri IV.
École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts.
He went on to study at the French Academy in Rome, Italy, from 1834 to 1838 under the direction of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. From 1849 on, he was an Architect of the City of Paris. In this office, he was responsible for the restoration of several churches, as well as the construction of the Catholic Saint-Augustin (1860-1867), in which he united the structural values of stone and steel.
In 1972 and 1973, however, these halls were torn down.
A single hall (completed in 1854) was classified as a historical monument and moved to Nogent-sur-Marne in 1971, where it is now known as the Pavillon Baltard. Victor Baltard also built the slaughterhouses and the cattle market of Les Halles de la Villette, as well as the tombs of composer Louis James Alfred Lefébure-Wély at the Père Lachaise Cemetery and of jurist Léon Louis Rostand at Montmartre Cemetery.
He was largely instrumental in introducing a regular scheme of fresco decoration by modern artists in the churches of Paris, to take the place of the heterogeneous collections of pictures of all kinds with which their walls had been promiscuously decorated.