The Enduring Mystery of the Loretto Chapel Staircase

It’s considered a miracle, an engineering marvel, and even a scientific anomaly, depending who you ask. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, the helix-shaped spiral staircase at Loretto Chapel has long puzzled visitors, including architects and physicists.

There are several unknowns surrounding the staircase and its late-19th-century origins. First off: how was the 20-foot structure, which includes two 360-degree turns, built without the use of nails or other support? And how has it never wavered, despite so much use, after all these years? Also unknown is the type of wood used to build the staircase, and who built it in the first place. Neither the carpenter nor their materials have ever been identified.

Over the years, multiple historians—and, more recently, internet sleuths—have scoured historical records and other sources in various attempts to solve the mystery, with little agreement between them. There are numerous conflicting theories, and the staircase’s construction has been scrutinized in several books and even an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Today, roughly 250,000 visitors marvel at the chapel and its mystifyingly unsupported spirals each year.

For some, the ongoing mystery is an answer in itself. According to chapel curator Richard Lindsley, these absences of information can only lead to one explanation: a divine miracle.

“People from all different fields—from faith, from science—have gravitated to it, but no one has given me truly convincing evidence,” says Lindsley, who’s been employed by the chapel for over 30 years. “And that’s why I choose to believe that prayers to St. Joseph were deeply involved.”

Once upon a time in New Mexico

In 1872, the Sisters of Loretto, a Catholic religious order that originated in Kentucky, commissioned a chapel to be built for their girls’ school in Santa Fe. The blueprint came from prominent French architect Antoine Mouly’s son, Projectus. The chapel would serve as a side project while he worked on the nearby Saint Francis Cathedral with his father.

After five years of construction, the Loretto Chapel was consecrated in 1878 as an impressive Gothic Revival building based on the famous Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. With spirals and buttresses constructed from locally quarried sandstone, plus stained glass windows imported from France via the Santa Fe Trail, the chapel was considered a masterpiece—that is, until everyone realized that Projectus Mouly’s plans did not include access to the chapel’s choir loft. Unfortunately, by that time, Mouly had met his untimely death in a shooting; his father had returned to France.

The nuns called in a team of carpenters, who after a period of deliberation decided that this problem could never be solved. A staircase would not only detract from the chapel’s grand design, they said; it would also be impossible to build in such a small space. The only feasible way to reach the loft would be by ladder, which the nuns refused as being too inappropriate and hazardous to climb in their habits.

Without alternatives, the sisters turned to what they knew best: prayer. During a novena (nine days’ of consecutive prayer to a specific saint or intention), they asked St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters, for an answer.

Allegedly, on the ninth day, a mysterious, shabby-looking man arrived with a donkey and a toolbox, offering his services. Over the next few months, he made the staircase for the chapel, requesting only complete privacy and several tubs of hot water for the duration. When it was finished, he left suddenly without taking payment.

Of course, the sisters were flummoxed to see the result: a sleek, beautiful staircase comprising 33 steps—33 being the age at which Jesus was crucified—held together with only wooden pegs, no nails. Even more incredulously? The wood it was made of certainly did not come from New Mexico.

After searching for the man, and never finding him, they concluded that the Loretto Chapel’s staircase must have been built by St. Joseph himself.

Searching for the carpenter’s identity

To this day, no one knows who built the staircase. Whoever he was, decades of experts have confirmed that he must have been a woodworking master to create a staircase comprising two tightly coiled 360-degree turns free of centering support.

According to Reba Weatherford, an archivist at the Loretto Heritage Center in Kentucky, dozens of people have written to the order over the years claiming that a relative of theirs had been the unknown man. One writes:

“My grandfather J.H. Rogers disappeared from Omaha, Nebraska in 1881 … When he arrived in Santa Fe, he heard about the need for the stairway and he decided to build the stairway as an atonement for his sins of drinking. That could be the reason for not staying around after it was built to receive any money.”

This letter is just one story of many. “In the 1950s and 1960s, there were a lot of these,” Weatherford says.

The most popular theory about the carpenter’s identity has come from Santa Fe historian Mary J. Straw Cook in her 1984 book Loretto: The Sisters and Their Santa Fe Chapel. She posits that the builder was François-Jean “Frenchy” Rochas, citing a 1895 newspaper article about the murder of the reclusive rancher. The article described Rochas as “an expert worker in wood”, and claimed he was the man behind the Loretto Chapel staircase.

Cook backed up her claim with an 1881 logbook memo for an $150 check “[p]aid for wood — Mr. Rochas for N. School.”

Many familiar with the staircase mystery aren’t satisfied with this theory, however, as the payment was three years after the staircase’s supposed completion and, at that time, the sisters had indeed also commissioned the building of a nearby school.

Loretto archivist Weatherford adds, “The [newspaper] clipping has been referenced a lot, that’s for sure. But it does not exist in our records, I don’t know where it exists.”

Unfortunately, many such historical records pertaining to the staircase have been hard to find. Some were lost over the years, in the moving of archival records between convents, or burned in several fires that destroyed the schools and convent buildings throughout New Mexico missions in the late 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries.

A structure defying physics, even today

The staircase’s design was ingenious for its era, even more so considering how it was made to stay up using only basic hand tools and no electricity. Over the years, the staircase also endured regular use (a 1959 archival photo shows a 20-strong womens’ choir assembled on its steps), though these days, its access is firmly closed to the public.

Lindsley, the curator, says he’s spoken to architects who can’t explain the staircase’s durability. “Every carpenter I’ve ever met has been amazed,” Lindsley says. He recalls many stories of scientists and tradespeople visiting the chapel, like the staircase builder from Arizona who once spent eight hours intensely inspecting the staircase. “I was impressed by his wife, who was there and waiting for him [the whole time],” he laughs.

A puzzling detail exists, though. Despite being such a master craftsman, the staircase’s builder did leave out one thing: a hand railing to keep the steps from shaking when stepped on. (The twisted stairs, like a giant spring, were known to have a serious bounce.) After a decade, a railing was added, when supposedly the nuns grew tired of crawling down on their hands and knees to prevent tripping.

Indeed, it’s strange that a narrow spiral staircase, intended for nuns in traditional robes, wouldn’t come with hand support in the first place.

The wood’s unknown origins

Experts have determined that the staircase is made of spruce wood, but it’s unclear where the wood came from. It certainly did not come from local lumber yards. Recently, the wood’s inconclusive origins have become what many consider to be an absolute indication that Loretto Chapel’s staircase was a divine act.

In 1996, Forrest N. Easley, a retired forester and wood technologist for the U.S. Forest Service, also formerly of the U.S Navy Research and Development Laboratory, studied the staircase over 15 months. He concluded in a study that no spruce existed in the world exactly like it, even suggesting that the wood was so unique that it should be named “Loretto Spruce”.

The staircase’s legacy

The Loretto Chapel was actively used every day by the students and nuns of the Loretto Academy girls’ school until it closed in 1968. Today, it functions as a privately owned museum, visited by everyone from Catholic pilgrims to school groups; it’s also a popular wedding venue.

The Loretto Heritage Center archives highlight the staircase mystery’s impact over the years. This impact can be seen in a film made about the staircase, as well as songs, a comic book, and a children’s book, which archivist Reba Weatherford has blogged about. Each year, she says, the center receives a handful of information requests from curious documentarians and filmmakers.

She says the sisters are too busy focusing on the Loretto community’s mission to “work for justice and act for peace” to pay much attention to the staircase’s fame. Instead they simply enjoy the miracle and mystery. “It’s interesting to have this instance of religious history colliding with pop culture,” she explains. “Especially from an archival perspective, it’s fun since the bulk of what we get are genealogy requests.”

Even after 30 years as curator, Richard Lindsley continues to welcome anyone to try to change his mind that the Loretto Chapel’s staircase is anything but a miracle. “I’m always asked my opinion and I have to believe [it’s a miracle],” he says. “And I’ll find out the details on the other side.

Source: Atlas Obscura - Latest Articles and Places