While not usually what I research, I stumbled across this super interesting bit of work. The Helix Staircase of Loretto Chapel in New Mexico is a wonderful former Roman Catholic Church. The church was built in the 1870s and it has a French gothic style , but unlike other chapels where you admire the paintings, statues, stained glass , and masonry skills, this chapel is famous for its helix spiral staircase , otherwise called the “Miraculous Stairs"
The Nuns of the Loretto Chapel that were there when it was being built realized at some point that they had to find a way to build a staircase to connect the choir loft to the ground floor. They 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 -but no one could provide a feasible solution.
From an unknown place or for unknown reason a man arrived one day and offered to do the job 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.
This staircase, given the tools used and mysterious circumstances of the man wanting to be alone, the staircase really should not work as well as it does. The bannister of the staircase is perfectly curved.. 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.
The man then left after completing the staircase, never requesting money or reward for his job well done. This certainly seems to be a miracle at this point. However, things got stranger when the owner of the Chapel, years later, Richard Lindsley decided to have the wood tested to see exactly what type it was there was much surprise. the wood tested 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.
Stranger still, when historian Mary J. Straw Cook researched the stairs for a book she was writing, she “found information in an 1881 nun’s day book 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.”
All in all, this staircase seems pretty amazing. Just looking at it, it really is breathtaking by any standard. just to think it was built so long ago and by allegedly one man. Was it a miracle? A free mason type society? or just a guy with some free time?
Hope everyone enjoyed this little detour into the "miracle" side of things.
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