The Palais Brongniart, built at Napoleon's direction to house the Paris stock exchange, anchors this albumen stereoview produced by Debitte & Hervé, the Paris firm operating at 170, rue de Rivoli. Debitte & Hervé were active as French photographers and publishers from the 1860s into the 1870s. The firm produced stereoscopic views on albumen paper from collodion glass negatives. The characteristic yellow mount with the studio imprint printed in gilt on both vertical borders dates the card to that same period.

The building's neoclassical facade is adorned with a continuous colonnade of Corinthian columns that runs the full visible length of the structure, rendered here in sharp albumen detail against a pale open sky. Horse-drawn carriages and pedestrians are scattered across the cobblestone Place de la Bourse in the foreground, with a detached carriage wheel visible at center, and mature trees flank the wrought-iron entrance gates at the base of the facade. Small groups of figures in mid-nineteenth-century dress stand near the gates, providing scale against the monumental portico.

The Palais Brongniart was built to designs by architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart from 1808 to 1813 and completed by Éloi Labarre from 1813 to 1826. It served as the seat of the Paris Stock Exchange until 1987, making stereoviews such as this one a primary visual record of the building and the Place de la Bourse as they appeared during the height of French Second Empire commercial life.

The reverse bears a pencil notation reading "2/20/10 COLAZ K." The studio imprint on the front reads, left border: "Photographic Company, 170, Rue de Rivoli"; right border: "Debitte & Hervé, 170, Rue de Rivoli, Paris."