Tuesday, April 25, 2017
The Loretto Chapel Staircase
In the City of Santa Fe in the state of New Mexico, USA,
there is an old building which attracts visitors from all over the world. It is the The Loretto Chapel building. It became very famous because it has a spiral
staircase which is mysterious or miraculous as many people who had seen it had
claimed. This is because the staircase is very unusual in structure, and it was
built under mysterious circumstances, by a lone man with simple carpentry tools
and unidentifiable wood working reclusively. And the carpenter had come, built
it and disappeared, leaving neither trace of his personality nor how the
materials were obtained.
Many stories on it exist,
and commonly they narrated that when the chapel building, 25 ft by 75 ft by 85
ft high including steeples and spires, and similar to the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, was completed it had a choir loft which had no stairway. Many
carpenters were called, but none could figure out a fitting design due to
insufficient space available. The nuns
began a Rosary novena, or nine consecutive days of pray to St. Joseph, their patron saint. At the end of the novena, a gray-haired man on a burro appeared, carrying a tool
chest containing a hammer, a saw and a T-square. He worked when the nuns were not praying in the
chapel, using a few
tubs of water for soaking the wood to make it pliable.
However, no other record is available on the history of the construction of the
stairway, and when it was completed it had no balustrade; the banisters were
added later, sometime in 1887.
The
winding stairway is a masterpiece of beauty and wonder. The whole staircase was
fixed with only square wooden pegs and no metal nails were used. It spirals 360
degree twice without the usual center pole like most circular stairways. It is
fixed to the loft floor ledge with its whole weight resting on the base
step. It is 22 feet in height and has 33 steps. The curves of the
stringers is an exhibit of perfection and the steps fitted with precision.
Visitors
and viewers invariably attributed this mysterious staircase as
miraculous as it
has withstood its firmness and stability for over the years up to now,
showing
signs of wear only on the edges. Many experts such as engineers,
architects, wood specialists and master carpenters have examined and
scrutinized the various aspects of the mystery too. Architects had
declared it baffling, engineers wondered why it had not collapsed, but there were master carpenters
who offered explanations
for the stability of the stairway.
The reasoning is that a straight inclined staircase consists
of two main stringers supporting the treads or steps. If this staircase is
twisted into a helix, it would resemble the staircase at the Loretto Chapel. As
to the strength of the Loretto Chapel staircase, there are three supporting
features. The inside
stringer, being of small diameter could amount to a column and be load-bearing;
the
double helix and the weight placed upon it could make it stronger; and the well-fitted square wooden
pegs could reinforce it as a virtual monolithic entity.
While there were explanations for the engineering aspects,
the nature of it and its coming into being remain to be viewed as miraculous. St.
Joseph was the patron saint of this chapel, and the nuns had prayed a Rosary novena to
him. A lone carpenter had arrived on the last day of the prayers, and he had built
it and disappeared without being recognized. He worked alone reclusively using
only a few primitive tools, yet the work was so exact, executed with precision and completed in
perfection. That was in the 1870's
and the man had no design plans; yet the wood pieces were exquisitely
crafted and structurally matching. Master carpenters marveled
it as exceptional
craftsmanship, a work
which the qualified professionals had all declined.
Only square wooden pegs were used, it has no nails
or screws. The outside stringer is a spliced perfectly curved structure of ten
pieces while the inside stringer is of eight pieces. Altogether it has 33 treads
and 33 risers. The wood is not native to the state of New Mexico and no wood specialists have been able
to identify neither the wood used nor where it came from.
The coincidences that there were 33 steps and that Jesus
was crucified at the age of 33 years old, that St. Joseph who was Jesus
foster father was also the patron saint of carpenters, and that the Rosary novena was made to St. Joseph, all added to the belief of this staircase
existence as miraculous, built by St. Joseph himself.
