Notre Dame des Victoires Church

566 Bush Street
Union Square/Chinatown

There are a handful of buildings in San Francisco that turn 100 this year.  This will be the beginning of my covering those buildings over the next few weeks.

Notre Dame des Victoires is one of the names for the Virgin Mary. This statue of Jesus’ mother is in front of the French church, Notre Dame des Victoires.

The French priest, Père Langlois journeyed to Oregon in 1842 with French Canadian trappers under the auspices of the Hudson Bay Company. He arrived in San Francisco in 1848. On July 19 of that year, he celebrated mass in an army chapel which was called St. Francis Church. He was assisted by Père Lebret, with sermons delivered in French, Italian and Spanish.

In 1856, Gustav Touchard bought a Baptist Church located at this site on Bush Street. Eglise Notre Dame des Victoires was founded to serve the spiritual needs of the French Catholic immigrants who came to San Francisco during the Gold Rush. In 1887, Pope Leo XIII signed the decree placing Eglise Notre Dame des Victoires under the charge of the Marists for perpetuity and giving it the designation of being a French National Church.

The old church was destroyed by the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. Work began on a new church and rectory in 1912 and was completed in 1913. Louis Brochoud designed the existing Romanesque church.

This small, buff-colored brick church sits on a high base with double staircases.  It has a barrel-shaped central bay flanked by polygonal towers topped by cupolas.  The nave and side aisles are defined by red marble columns that support a barrel-vaulted ceiling decorated with Romanesque and Classical plaster ornaments.

The church underwent a $2.1 million retrofit after the 1989 earthquake led by contractors Mayta and Jensen.

The centennial of the founding of the church is commemorated by a plaque given by the Republic of France in 1956 that sits beneath the statue of the Virgin Mary and reads:

 ” Don du gouvernment de la republique Francaise a l’eglise Notre Dame des Victoires a l’occasion du premier centenaire.” [Given by the government of the Republic of France to the Notre Dame des Victoires church for the occasion of the first centennial.]

 

SF Genealogy has a wonderful history of the French and their contributions to San Francisco that you can read here.