On Old Santa Fe Trail, just around the corner from St. Francis Cathedral, stands the small Gothic church known as the Loretto Chapel. Home to the famous “miraculous staircase,” the chapel was built in the 1870s for the Sisters of Loretto, a Kentucky-based teaching order who were the first to respond to Bishop Jean-Baptiste’s plea (he wrote reported wrote hundreds of letters) for teachers to found schools in the wild west of Santa Fe. Imagine these nuns traveling by boat and covered wagon over the Santa Fe Trail, with the Bishop himself teaching them Spanish along the way. The dusty streets and adobe houses must have been a shock, but these intrepid ladies hiked up their skirts (figuratively if not literally) and opened a school for girls, the Academy of Our Lady of Light, in 1853.
After Bishop Lamy finally raised the funds to replace the old adobe parish church with the cathedral of his dreams, he encouraged the sisters to avail themselves of the services of the architect he’d brought from France, Antoine Mouly. The nuns raised the money and did just that. The chapel is inspired by Sainte Chappelle, the bishop’s favorite chapel in Paris (which was also designed by Mouly). It’s a beautiful church with an arched ceiling, stained glass windows, and statues and Stations of the Cross made of pressed ceramic dust and painted to look like marble. The altar is similarly made of wood and painted to resemble marble. (Those thrifty sisters!)
The most famous feature of this lovely church is its graceful spiral staircase, whose origins and methods of construction are shrouded in mystery. So what makes the staircase miraculous? First, there’s the story of its maker. It wasn’t unusual for churches built in that period (and earlier) to have no stairs to the choir loft; most were reached by ladders. But the Loretto Chapel was built for and used by nuns in flowing habits and schoolgirls wearing long dresses—a ladder simply wouldn’t be practical. Through a series of events, the Sisters of Loretto were left with a dilemma: Mouly had gone back to France and his son, who was supervising the construction of both the chapel and cathedral, died suddenly (some say he was poisoned). Another architect is said to have died after the Bishop’s nephew, who suspected the man of having an affair with his wife, shot him dead at La Fonda hotel.
What’s a nun to do? The sisters needed a staircase—and not just any staircase but one which would fit into a small space—and they needed a carpenter. Being women of faith, they prayed. They said a novena (a nine-day prayer for special intentions) to St. Joseph, the patron of carpenters. The story goes that on the ninth day, an old man with a long white beard appeared at the chapel. He carried a toolbox, was leading a donkey, and offered to build the sisters their staircase. Some say he built it overnight. Some say he built it during the week before Christmas and finished it on Christmas Eve. Most say the job took months. But build it he did and, when it was finished, the man vanished. There is no record of his name.
But the mystery doesn’t end there: the unusual design of the staircase has only recently been replicated. It has no center beam, and is supported only at the church’s floor and choir loft. It’s thirty-three (traditionally the age of Jesus at his crucifixion) risers were constructed without a single nail (perfect round wooden pegs do the job). The mystery continues: there is no record of a sale of lumber for the staircase. More than that, the wood used has been identified only as a type of spruce, and nothing like it grows anywhere in the area. Who was this mysterious man? St. Joseph himself? Or was he a local man (several old Santa Fe families claim he was an uncle or grandfather)? A book by Mary Jean Straw Cook (Loretto: The Sisters and Their Santa Fe Chapel) offers another, more plausible explanation (but what fun is that?) Whoever he was, the carpenter built the spiral staircase without a banister. After years of crawling up the steep and twisting stairs on their hands and knees and creeping down on their posteriors, the nuns hired another carpenter to build a wooden railing. (As one who has been lucky enough to climb the stairs, I can’t say that I blame them)
The chapel has been privately owned since 1971. It is open to tourists daily and is available for weddings and special events. Concerts by the Santa Fe Desert Chorale (among others) are performed here. There is also a small museum and gift shop adjacent to the chapel.
