The house bears the name of Victor Lyon (1878-1963) who funded the entire project. The businessman and international banker, also the owner of a race course and an eclectic art collector, donated around sixty of his best paintings to the national museums of France including those by Cézanne, Renoir, Degas and Pissarro. It was inaugurated in 1950.
The Fondation Victor Lyon is managed by the Fondation nationale Cité internationale universitaire de Paris.
After two redevelopment projects completed in 2002 and 2009, the house was completely reclassified in 2017 by the Régie immobilière de la ville de Paris (RIVP) and the région Île-de-France, in order to provide rooms adapted to the needs of international researchers. The original architecture of the building was preserved. Originally consisting of 109 student rooms, it now has 39 fully-equipped rooms from studios to four beds instead of the 109 rooms. The most visible transformation is the construction of a 120-seat conference room on the garden level. This development allowed the Grand Lounge to be elongated to the south with a terrace.
After this major restoration the residence was inaugurated on the 31st of January 2018 by Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, Faten Hidri, the vice president of the Île-de-France regional council charged with higher education and research and Jean-Marc Sauvé, the president of the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris.
Stanley Milgram (1933-1984) resided in this house at the end of the fifties. An American social psychologist, he is primarily known for the scientific experiment that bears his name which elucidates the process of submitting and individual to an authority.
The Fondation Victor Lyon bears the name of the benefactor that financed its construction. It was designed by Lucien Bechmann, the architect who also, a quarter of a century before, designed the neighbouring building: the Fondation Deutsch de la Meurthe. Bechmann imagined a building with four floors made out of red brick in a pared-down style that contrasted with the picturesque style of the 1920s and 1930s. Certain elements, such as the terraced roof, are even characteristic of modern architecture.