Notre-Dame-du-Travail, Paris

A small chapel built in 1848, had preceded the present church, when the vilage was still just outside the city limits of Paris, surrounded by wheat fields. and had a population of two thousand. After the Gare de l'Ouest railway station (now Gare Montparnasse) was built, the neighborhood was renamed Plaisance, and became an industrial center, and the working class population grew rapidly. The Plaisance parish was annexed to Paris in 1860, and, as the population grew, the chapel was enlarged with a third traverse. In 1870, when the city was besieged by the Prussians during the Franco-Prussian War, the church was used as a hospital. During the Paris Commune in 1871, the church was briefly confiscated and the priest imprisoned.[2]

As the population of the neighborhood grew, the church was soon overcrowded. In 1884 the Vicar, Father Roger Soulange-Bodin, organized a national campaign to raise funds for a new and bigger church. He wrote, "Why a church? To unite in a religious setting the workers lof all classes. Why Paris? Because Paris is correctly considered the center of labor and industry. Why the Plaisance quarter? Because it is a unique neighborhood inhabited uniquely of workers, which at present does not have a church for its thirty-five thousand inhabitants."[3]

[4] The initial funds were raised, and construction began. The architect was Jules-Godefroy Astruc (1862-1955), who had also built the church of Saint Hippolyte in the 13th arrondissement. The work was delayed by high costs, and Soulange-Bodin had to raise more funds to complete it. He was obliged to donate the rest of his personal fortune to finish the work. With the help of donations from local businesses and industrial enterprises, the church was finally completed in April 1902. Restoration and modifications took place in the 1960s and 1970s, adding additional paintings and modifications and additions and modifications [5][6]

• 
  The facade
• 
  Side view with bell tower
• 
  The bell tower with the Bell of Sebastopol.
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  Neo-Byzantine Fresco of the Virgin Mary over the portal by Geneviève and Henri Taillefert, (20th c.)

The exterior of the church, facing Square du Cardinal-Wyszynski, is in the neo-Romanesque style, giving little hint of the modern features of the interior.

A notable work of art on the exterior is found in the tympanum over the portal. "The Virgin and Child" was painted in the neo-Byzantine style by Genevieve and Henri Taillefert at the beginning of the 20th century.[7]

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  Interior, facing the choir
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  Arcades of the nave, lined with small chapels

The church is fifty-nine meters long and twenty-five meters high. The central part of the nave 9.5 meters wide and twenty meters high, up to the steel ribs of the vault. The most prominent features of the interior are the two rows of steel columns which divide the church into a central aisle and two collateral aisles. The collateral aisles are lined with small chapels. lined with with the nave flanked by arcades and support the arches of the ceiling and the collateral aisles, replacing the traditional stone columns of earlier churches. Astruc deliberately made the interior look industrial, so that "it would call to the mind of the worker his factory, surrounded by a familiar milieu."[11]

Some of the steel plates and cornieres of the frame were recuperated from the Palace of Industry of the 1855 Paris Universal Exposition, which had been demolished to make roo for the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900. Astruc riveted the pieces together, following his own plan, leaving the plates and rivets fully visible.[12] The new elements of the frame were fabricated in a workshop on Boulevard de Vaugirard, and brought to the site for installation.[13]

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  Chapel of Saint Francis of Assisi. with painting by Emile Desouches
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  Chapel of Saint Genevieve, Patron Saint of Paris" by Guiseppe Uberti
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  Chapel of Saint Fiacre, "The Saint with Angels". Tools of a gardener are placed beside the Saint.
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  "Saint Francis of Assisi"- Notre Dame de Travail, Paris
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  Holy Family Chapel, painting "Holy Family at work" and Sculpture of "The fountain of the shepherds" by Henri Proszynski (1930s)
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  Chapel of Saint Luke, "Saint Luke with angels", sculpture "The Virgin of the Flowers" by Georges Serroz (1883-1964)

Long galleries run the length of the walls of the nave, below the high stained glass windows, which are mostly white glass, to admit more light. The arcades along the collateral aisles hold a series small chapels, each decorated with paintings and sculpture. While the structure of the interior is modern, the decoration around the pantings reflects the Art Nouveau style floral designs of the period, with lavish use of floral designs on the walls and around the art.

• 
  The grand organ in the tribune
• 
  The grand organ
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  The remote keyboard located in the nave

The grand organ is modern, built in 1991 by the firm of Haepfer and installed in the tribune at entrance to the Nave. It has sixty-one notes on the regular keyboard, sixty-one expressive notes, and thirty-two pedals. It has an unusual feature; it has two separate consoles or keyboards;, one located in the tribune with the organ, with a traditional mechanical connection to the instrument, and a second mobile keyboard which is located in the nave. The mobile keyboard has three keyboards and thirty-two foot pedals, which are connected by a multiplex system to the organ. It can play all the same notes as the traditional keyboard, as well as additional expressive notes that are specific to it.[17]

• "Guide de visite, Notre-Dame-du Travail - Art, Culture et Foi", under direction of Fr. François Potez, published by church in 2022 viewed in 2023

• Cécile Dupré, « Notre-Dame-du-Travail (Paris), une église au tournant du xixe siècle et du xxe siècle », In Situ. Revue du patrimoine, no 11, 2009

• Link to French Wikipedia article on the church (in French)
• Full article on church on patrimoine-histoire.fr (in French)