The Chapel of Our Lady of Light in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is the home of a wooden spiral staircase steeped in mystery. Actually, it is not the staircase that is the mystery, it is the lone carpenter who built it...
In 1852, seven nuns left Kentucky travelling in covered wagons to Santa Fe to bring education and religion to the growing city. Five nuns arrived in Santa Fe, one nun died of Cholera, one turned back too sick to continue. Once in Santa Fe, the Sisters of Loretto set up camp and began their work.
In 1873, construction began on the Chapel of Our Lady of Light, the chapel commissioned along with Our Lady of Light Academy. The architect of the beautiful gothic chapel was the charming and talented Projectus Mouly,18 year old son of master architect Antoine Mouly. Sadly, in 1878, just before it's completion, the charismatic French architect was shot and killed by John Lamy, the nephew of the archbishop, because John believed his wife received too much of the young architect's attention.
The Loretto nuns were left with a beautiful chapel and no stairway to the choir loft. It was determined that the staircase in Mouly's plans wouldn't fit. Many architects and carpenters visited the chapel, but none could come up with a staircase to fit inside the chapel without remodelling the inside of the chapel itself, and taking up valuable space. So the nuns prayed for an answer to their staircase dilemma.
Here begins the mystery... after eight days of prayer, an elderly carpenter with a mule and simple tools arrived and said he could build the staircase. He alone built the wooden staircase without the use of nails, screws, or central support. After some time, the staircase was complete and the carpenter left, without payment. The nuns planned a great feast, but no one knew where the carpenter stayed or where he may have gone, even the local lumberyard had no record of the purchase of wood. The nuns began to believe it was St. Joseph himself, the father of Jesus, who built the awe-inspiring staircase. Especially since there were exactly 33 stairs, the number of years Jesus was on Earth before ascending to heaven.
There have been a few who claim to know who may have built the staircase. Some say Johann Hadwiger, a master carpenter, built the spiral staircase. He spent 2 years traveling and working in the west, and after his death, his grandson found a sketch of a spiral staircase with 33 steps in his old toolbox. Perhaps it was Francois-Jean Rochas, whose death notice written in The Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper read "an expert worker in wood who built the staircase in the Loretto chapel".
So who built the mysterious spiral staircase? Man or Saint? Perhaps the better question is, if it were a mere mortal man, does it really matter? Five nuns, in 1878 Santa Fe, prayed for someone to do what no other architect, engineer, craftsman, or carpenter who visited the chapel before-hand could do, and many visiting master carpenters and architects to this day stand in awe of. They prayed for a miracle, a master carpenter, and he came. An elderly man with his mule, his simple tools, and his humility.
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