Loretto Chapel

1873

Commissioned in 1873 and modeled on the Sainte-Chapelle

The Sisters of Loretto commissioned the chapel for their girls' school, Loretto Academy, in 1873. The architect Projectus Mouly based its Gothic Revival design, with stained glass imported from France by way of the Santa Fe Trail, on the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. It took five years and was consecrated in 1878.

The stair

A staircase with two full turns and no central pole

The staircase rises 20 feet to the choir loft in two full turns, with no newel or central pole. It is built mostly of wood and held together by wooden pegs, with no glue, nails or other hardware. It has 33 stairs. A carpenter who wrote about it called it a feat even with modern tools.

20 ftrise to the choir loft, in two full turns

The story

A stranger offered to build it and left without his pay

In the Sisters' version, builders could find no solution in the tight space, so the nuns prayed for nine days to Saint Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. On the last day a stranger offered to build the stair. He worked alone with a few hand tools and disappeared without his pay. The Sisters believed the builder was Saint Joseph himself.

A theory

A historian suggests a French carpenter named Rochas built it

In the early 2000s the amateur historian Mary Jean Cook proposed that the builder was Rochas, a reclusive rancher and occasional carpenter who came to New Mexico from France around the 1870s. She found an entry in the Sisters' logbook showing he was paid for wood in 1881. Others have disputed her theory.