A gutted multi-story building identified on the reverse as a property in Auteuil fills the center of this albumen cabinet card, almost certainly dating to 1871 in the immediate aftermath of the Paris Commune. The facade of the ground floor retains its painted commercial signage in large letters reading "Restaurant Lacier," with a secondary panel advertising "Salons" and "Noces et Diners" (wedding and dinner halls), placing this as a dining establishment of some local standing before its destruction. The photographer is unidentified and no studio imprint appears on the mount.

The building has been reduced to an open shell, its floors collapsed or hanging, interior timbers exposed across four visible stories, and the street-level facade partially collapsed into a massive pile of cut-stone rubble along the curb. To the left, a free-standing section of masonry wall rises without any adjoining structure, its surface pocked and cracked. A horse cart with large wooden-spoked wheels sits abandoned in the street beside the debris field, and several stripped trees line the boulevard behind it.

Photographs of Paris ruins were sold in diverse formats, individually or in albums, and published as engravings in newspapers, depicting an entirely devastated city in the wake of the Commune's suppression in May 1871. The Paris Commune was the first important event in French history to be the object of full-scale photographic coverage, as the American Civil War had been a few years before. Street-level views documenting named commercial establishments in the destroyed quarters of Auteuil are among the most historically specific survivals of that documentation campaign.

The reverse is inscribed in ink at upper left "Maison d'Auteuil" (House of Auteuil), with additional pencil notations at lower left including a collector's monogram, "2 of 10," "10/13/07," "A0CBDX," and "E6," indicating this card was once part of a numbered sequence of ten.