From 1978 to 2016 they were succeeded by a specialized mall of antiques shops, the Louvre des Antiquaires, while the upper floors were repurposed as rented office space.

They commissioned their customary architect Alfred Armand [fr], who was assisted for the project by Jacques Ignace Hittorff, Charles Rohault de Fleury and Auguste Pellechet [fr],[3] and strictly adhered for the external facades to Percier and Fontaine's stern design guidelines for the rue de Rivoli dating from the time of Napoleon I.

The Grand Hôtel du Louvre was inaugurated on 9 July 1855, a few weeks into the Exposition Universelle that had opened on 1 May 1855,[4] but its actual operations only started on 15 October 1855 and reached a steady state in early 1856.

[2]: 14 [8] An 1872 Baedeker guide described the Grand Hôtel du Louvre as "a huge, palatial edifice, the construction of which cost upwards of 50,000 £.

[9] As the hotel opened in 1855, the building's street level and mezzanine (French: entresol) were devoted to a commercial mall with 41 luxury shops at the time of inauguration.

The Galeries was operated by Alfred Chauchard [fr], who had previously been a clerk at a store named Au Pauvre Diable with a salary of 25 Francs per month, and his partners Auguste Hériot [fr] and Léonce Faré, through a commercial venture formed on 26 March 1855 that rented the space from the Pereires' landlord entity, itself renamed in 1858 the Compagnie immobilière de Paris.

Following remodeling that started in the late 1860s, on 17 March 1873 the department store opened an expansion that brought it to a floor surface of 13,700 square meters, which its boasted as the world's largest.

On 14 August 1875, Chauchard, Hériot et Compagnie bought the whole building from the administrators, and subsequently tasked architect Henry Dubois with its remodeling including the transformation of the main interior courtyards into covered atriums.

Olympe in 1887 married Cyprienne Dubernet, a former saleswoman at the store, and directed the company alone until 1888, when first signs of his mental illness forced his resignation.

In 1909, the Grands Magasins expanded into an annex across rue de Marengo, connected to the main building by an underground passage.

That building was repurposed in 2002–2005 on a design by architect Francis Soler [fr] with a distinctive metal screen in front of the facades, to host central offices of the French Ministry of Culture.

[2]: 12 The building was entirely reconstructed by its new owner, with demolition works starting in February 1976, on a design by architect Wladimir Lentzy that only kept from the prior structure the street facades as well as the façades of the westernmost inner courtyard.