The Enduring Mystery of the Loretto Chapel Staircase
Posted on October 9, 2024, by Loretto Community
Published by Atlas Obscura on October 8, 2024
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.
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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.”
Read the entire story here.
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