A stereoview on a yellow-bordered mount records the wreckage at the Place Vendôme in the immediate aftermath of the Paris Commune's most iconic act of destruction. The image is an albumen silver print issued in 1871 and dated 1872 in a period hand inscription on the mount; no photographer's imprint is visible on either face. On May 16, 1871, a group of Communards pulled down the Vendôme Column, and this stereoview was made in the rubble-strewn square that followed.

The foreground is dominated by the toppled bronze capital of the column, its layered laurel-scale ornament clearly legible as it rests at an angle on churned earth amid scattered timber planking, stone fragments, and construction debris. Behind it rises the massive square pedestal, its spiral bas-relief panels still intact and sharply rendered, with the truncated upper drum visible above. A row of Second Empire Haussmann-era facades lines the background, their arched windows and mansard rooflines undamaged and in sharp focus.

The Vendôme Column was built by Napoleon I as a glorification of the victorious French soldiers who defeated the Russian-Austrian alliance at the Battle of Austerlitz; the battle-scene bas-reliefs spiraling up the shaft were cast from the bronze of captured cannon. In the aftermath of the Commune, the column was rebuilt in 1873, with costs assigned to Gustave Courbet, who had advocated for its removal; by 1875 the reconstructed column stood once more.

Inscribed in ink on the recto, upper left: "Column Ven Dome / 1872. Paris." Reverse inscribed in pencil: "Colonne Vendome" (Vendôme Column) at top; center in ink: "Mary V. Gould / N.E., / 1872"; left margin: "2/03/10" and "LOADER x"; lower left: "Eb."