Victor was born in Paris, son of architect Louis-Pierre Baltard and attended Lycée Henri IV.

[1] He later studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he garnered the Prix de Rome for designing a military school in 1833.

In this office, he was responsible for the restoration of several churches, as well as the construction of the Catholic Saint-Augustin (1860–67), in which he united the structural values of stone and steel.

A single hall (completed in 1854) was classified as a historical monument and moved to Nogent-sur-Marne in 1971, where it is now known as the Pavillon Baltard.

Victor Baltard also built the slaughterhouses and the cattle market of Les Halles de la Villette,[2] as well as the tombs of composer Louis James Alfred Lefébure-Wély at the Père Lachaise Cemetery and of jurist Léon Louis Rostand at Montmartre Cemetery.