In 1859, the acting Commandant of New Caledonia, Jean-Marie Saisset, asked the government in Paris to build a lighthouse to help ships navigating into the port of
Nouméa (then Fort-de-France), particularly as the colony had been chosen as a new destination for French convicts. Taking into account the lack of
stonemasons and other skilled workers in the colony, the French lighthouse commission proposed a pre-fabricated iron design, a relatively new method first used in 1841 by the British consulting engineer Alexander Gordon for the
Morant Point Lighthouse in
Jamaica. The French Minister for the Navy and the Colonies,
Prosper de Chasseloup-Laubat, approved the project and appointed Léonce Reynaud, who had already designed many lighthouses and who had also designed the original
Gare du Nord in
Paris, to oversee it. Reynaud followed Gordon in making the pieces out of
puddled iron, and in keeping the lighthouse narrow enough to be constructed without
scaffolding. He innovated by keeping the internal structure independent of the external envelope: this was intended as protection against corrosion in the humid tropical environment for which he was designing the lighthouse. The plans were exhibited at the
1862 International Exhibition in
London. The metalwork was fabricated in four months by Rigolet, who were then required to construct the tower near their works in the
19th arrondissement of Paris as a demonstration of its stability. The lighthouse remained in Paris from July 1862 to June 1864 and became a popular destination for Parisians' walks. The pieces, packed in 1,200 crates and weighing , were transported to
Le Havre by
barge and then shipped to New Caledonia, arriving in November 1864. The lighthouse was constructed on Amédée island by a mixed team of French soldiers and local workers under the direction of
Louis-Émile Bertin, later to be a major naval architect both for France and for
Japan. It was lit for the first time on 15 November 1865, the saint's day of the
Empress Eugénie, wife of
Napoléon III. ==Important Bird Area==