The only big Paris church of the sixties of much real distinction—the only French church, for that matter—is Saint-Pierre-de-Montrouge at the intersection of the Avenue du Maine and the Avenue d’Orléans. This was built by J.-A.-E. Vaudremer (1829-1914), a pupil of Blouet and Gilbert, in 1864-70. Romanesque and Early Christian—perhaps more specifically Syrian—in inspiration,[194] this basilica is notably direct in its structural expression, nobly scaled, expressively composed, and restrained almost to the point of crudity in its detailing (Plate 72A). Vaudremer’s Santé Prison off the Boulevard Arago in Paris, which was commissioned in 1862 and built in 1865-85, is also Romanesquoid or at least in a sort of very simple _Rundbogenstil_. The still quite Durandesque character of this prison illustrates Vaudremer’s close linkage, through the work of his two masters, who had both specialized in designing prisons and asylums under Louis Philippe, with the classicizing rationalism of 1800. His much later Lycées of the eighties, Buffon and Molière in Paris and those at Grenoble and Montauban, on the other hand, reflect the more Gothic rationalism of Viollet-le-Duc (see Chapter 11). Vaudremer’s work may have had some influence, around 1870, on the American Richardson, who was still a student in Paris when Saint-Pierre-de-Montrouge was begun (see Chapter 13). However, no significant line of development led forward in France from his sort of church design. In a smaller and later Parisian church, Notre-Dame in the Rue d’Auteuil of 1876-83, Vaudremer himself showed no further development of his personal style, though the interior here is not unimpressive in its scale and proportions. The vast and prominent church of the Sacré-Cœur on Montmartre in Paris was begun by Paul Abadie[195] (1812-84), a pupil of Leclerc, well after the Second Empire was over in 1874, and largely finished before the end of the century by the younger Magne (Lucien, 1849-1916). This is Romanesque in inspiration, too, but painfully archaeological—’painfully’, because its architect, in carrying out the restoration of his principal medieval exemplar, Saint-Front at Périgueux, seems to have sought to provide ‘precedent’ for several of the features that he introduced here! Yet the bold exploitation of the remarkable site of this church, dominating Paris from the heights of Montmartre, and the bubble-like silhouette of its cluster of domes when seen from a distance give the Sacré-Cœur positive qualities lacking in most other French ecclesiastical work of the later nineteenth century except Saint-Pierre-de-Montrouge.