The Helix Staircase of the Loretto Chapel

In the center of Sante Fe, NM stands a former Roman Catholic Church, known as the Loretto chapel, that was constructed in the popular Gothic Revival style by French architect Antoine Mouly. To Bishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy’s dismay, Mouly didn’t live to see the chapel completed. The renowned architect passed away when the chapel was nearly done, leaving the chapel unfinished.

Despite the beauty and craftsmanship of the chapel, it lacked a critical component, a staircase. As the story goes, the chapel was completed in 1878, but there was no way to get to the choir loft, which is 20 feet off the ground. The Sisters believed this to be a test of faith and set out to find a new carpenter to finish the work promptly.

Legend of the Loretto Chapel Staircase Miracle

According to legend, which has since been made into a movie called “The Staircase” (1998), the nuns didn’t want the staircase to be big because it would take up too much space, so they went to get advice from the local carpenters.

Unfortunately, they met with many carpenters, none of whom could provide a solution that worked for the Sisters. Some said it couldn’t be done, while others quoted an outrageous price. The only option was to use a ladder, which was deemed inappropriate due to the sister’s attire.

In 1880, the Sisters started praying to the patron saint of carpenters, St. Joseph. They asked for a solution to their dilemma and prayed for over a week. According to the historical account, on the 9th day, a man arrived on his mule with some tools. He revealed to the Sisters that he was a carpenter by trade, and they eagerly invited him in.

This carpenter was unlike any who had come before him, and shortly after viewing the problem, he admitted that putting a staircase in was possible, even ones that wouldn’t take up too much space or be an eyesore.

But he asked to be alone in the chapel for three months and, with only simple tools including a saw, T-square, and a hammer, he built the ‘miraculous’ staircase. It is a spiral staircase making two complete 360 degrees rotations but without using a central pole and without using any nails, only wooden pegs.

The bannister of the staircase is perfectly curved, a remarkable accomplishment considering the basic tools that were used. The shape of the helix is not a stable weight-supporting structure, and without the middle column it shouldn’t be able to withstand the weight of people using the staircase.

When the man finished the staircase, he left without asking for a cent. The nuns tried to find him but they could not. They did not know who he was or where he got the wood. Ten years later the railing was added to the staircase by Phillip August Heasch for safety reasons.

The order decided to honor the carpenter’s deed with a banquet, but when it was time to feast, they could not find him. He had disappeared without a trace; he did not identify himself during his time there or ask for payment. Because his identity remains a secret, the Sisters believed him to be St. Joseph, answering their prayers. The number of steps is of religious significance because it was Jesus’ age during his crucifixion. This realization only further convinced the Sisters and fueled the story that St. Joseph had come to their rescue.

With the staircase finished, the chapel was finally complete, but the mystery of its construction was impossible to ignore, and many pondered how the carpenter accomplished the job. The manager of the privately owned chapel (1991-2006), Richard Lindsley, took a piece of wood from the staircase and sent it for analysis. When the results came back, they showed that it was spruce, but of an unknown subspecies. This specific wood was very strong with dense and square molecules – which is something that you usually find in trees that grow very slowly in very cold places like Alaska.

However, there was no such wood in the area and no local trees grow in the Alpine tundra in the surrounding area. The closest place that he would find this density in trees was in Alaska, but of course back then transport was not the same as it is now and wood was not transported over such long distances.

Were the Stairs Created by a Man from a French Secret Society?

Santa Fe New Mexican offers an alternative explanation for the amazing staircase. It’s said that when historian Mary J. Straw Cook researched the stairs for a book she was writing, she “found information in an 1881 nun’s daybook that a man named Rochas was paid for wood.” Francois-Jean Rochas, an alleged “member of a French secret society of highly skilled craftsmen and artisans called the Compagnons, which had existed since the Middle Ages” has been named as the skilled woodworker who apparently “came to the U.S. with the purpose of building the staircase with wood shipped from France.”

When a group of stair-building professionals convened at the Loretto Chapel a few years ago to see the staircase they were shocked at the beauty, design, and engineering of the stairs. A couple of their comments on the workmanship after analyzing the stairs are:

“We all like to think we create creative stair designs and nice curved staircases, but to think how they did it that long ago and still attain the same quality is breathtaking” and

Later, Cook found a newspaper article mentioning Mr. Rochas and that he was a skilled woodworker who built the staircase. Rochas was a member of a secret French society of skilled artisans known as the Compagnons and had come to the U.S. to design the Santa Fe staircase specifically; the wood came from France.

Even with all the advances in technology and engineering, no one can determine how the staircase was built. The stairs are a beautiful and mysterious element of the Loretto Chapel, regardless of the facts around its construction.