A little history of Notre-Dame-du-Travail church
And also
The tops
A nice and unusual church raised between 1898 and 1902 by architect Jules Astruc, on the location of an old church (Notre-Dame-de-Plaisance).
This one was made of cheap materials, such as freestone, rubble or meulière (typical stone from Paris and Ile-de-France area), and even steel and iron for the framework!
They chose iron and steel because the man who decided to raise the current church, abbot Soulange, wanted to dedicate it to workers and to work. And there were plenty of workers here, in the 14th arrondissement!
Those workers were hired on huge building sites, for instance the Universal Exhibitions site on the Champ-de-Mars.
One striking thing is that the iron came from the demolition of the Industry Palace, in 1899, a palace raised for the Universal Exhibition of 1855! Well, some kind of recycling...
The bell was a war trophy took in Sebastopol in 1854, then given by Napoleon III to the parish in 1861...