Loretto spiral staircase

No one has ever been able to duplicate this staircase of 1880, even with modern tools and computers. Its location is in Santa Fe (New Mexico), founded in 1607, which literally means "Holy Faith."

The helix staircase today with two 360-degree turns, and no supporting column.

Without any supporting column, the staircase sustains an entire choir - and physicists are baffled how. See Physics of Loretto staircase

A gravity-defying spiral staircase at Loretto Chapel, a half-mile from the Capitol in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was built without any supporting nails, screws, or the use of any power tools. The staircase is held together entirely by wooden pegs, without glue. It does two full 360-degree turns to reach a choir loft 22 feet above. Its builder was an unknown visitor to the Chapel around 1880, who worked without pay and used wood unavailable in the area. This helix staircase was featured on an Unsolved Mysteries television episode and is widely discussed on the internet. Diane Ladd, an Academy Award-nominated actress and the mother of actress Laura Dern, starred in a movie about this entitled The Staircase.

“

Three mysteries surround the spiral staircase in the Loretto Chapel: the identity of its builder, the type of wood used, and the physics of its construction.

”

An additional mystery is how it supports so much weight, see Physics of Loretto staircase. There are precisely 33 steps in this helix staircase - apparently one for each year in the life of Jesus. Almost certainly its builder was an angel, or St. Joseph himself (who was a carpenter).

This spiral staircase is analogous to the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is written in perfect, magnificent Greek by an unknown author. Today the spiral staircase is a marvel of carpentry that would be exceedingly difficult to duplicate even with the use of modern power tools and metal, let alone with merely pegs and glue by a single carpenter in 1880.

This spectacular spiral staircase is a central attraction for visitors to Santa Fe to this day, and is also the location of special events such as weddings.

Mysterious wood

“

[T]he manager of the privately owned chapel (1991-2006), Richard Lindsley, took a piece of wood from the staircase and sent it for analysis to find out what kind of wood it was. When the results came back, they showed that it was spruce, but of an unknown subspecies. This specific wood was very strong with molecules dense and square 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 (approximately 2,000 to 3,000 meters) 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.

”

The U.S. Navy tested the wood and determined that it is unique from no known type of tree or DNA.

Skeptics

Skeptics cannot deny that the helix staircase exists, as many visit it annually. They also cannot deny that it lacks a center supporting column as other spiral staircases have and need for support. Skeptics have denied that the Loretto staircase can support much weight, but the foregoing photo proves them wrong about that too.

Snopes tries to downplay this achievement and dispel this mystery, but its arguments are unpersuasive. For example, Snopes implies that a side connector added later (and visible above), to stop the springiness of the stairs, is somehow a support. It plainly is not. Snopes also tries to disparage the original staircase as possibly being unsafe because it lacked a hand-railing, but that obviously misses the point and the hand-railing was trivial to add when desired. The Snopes analysis concludes with a slap at the private ownership of the chapel, by saying that they somehow have "a strong financial motive" to perpetuate a legend, as though anyone is getting rich off this.

Wikipedia's entry about this staircase likewise suffers from liberal bias. The wood is not even from New Mexico, which Wikipedia confirms but then ignores how that and other undeniable facts confirm this miracle.

Other spiral staircases

Skeptics assert that other spiral staircases exist without a center supporting column, but actually each one has another form of support, in contrast with the Loretto spiral staircase:

• The spiral stairs at Gdańsk Town Hall in Poland are supported by a twisting column and by sturdy stringers underneath and to the side of the stairs.
• The circular staircase at the Old Washoe Club, as built in 1862 in Virginia City, Nevada, is apparently supported by a sturdy handrail and does not have the full twists that the Loretto spiral staircase has.

Visits

This staircase attracts 300 to 1000 visitors per day.

See also

• Official site
• Physics of Loretto staircase
• Concise overview with excellent graphics
• Anita Sumali, Biomedical Engineering Department, "Texas A&M University, The Column-Less Stair in Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico: Strength Analysis" (with photos)
• The Enduring Mystery of the Loretto Chapel Staircase
• introduction to physics of Loretto spiral staircase
• Good analysis with a discussion of the significance of 33 steps
• News video story on YouTube
• David Tománek and Arthur G. Every, "Origin of Unusually High Rigidity in Selected Helical Coil Structures," Phys. Rev. Applied 8 - 014002 (July 10, 2017)
• Tim Carter, Ask the Builder, "The Loretto Chapel staircase: A lesson in physics, not miracles" Washington Post (Saturday, January 16, 2010) (which fails to address the implausibility of its theory that side wood, shaped as a twisted helix and apparently merely the sides of each step, serving as monolithic stair stringers to support the entire structure)
• Conference of experts study this staircase in 2024, and comment
• Gene Hackman described the Santa Fe area as having a "magic", and he moved there to live his final 35 years
• Road to Emmaus - this account in the Gospel of Luke echoes the playful disappearance of the carpenter who constructed this staircase.
• Skepticism based on a theory that stringers were twisted into a helix
• A blogpost that alleges the wood is spruce without admitting that it is an unknown subspecies and that there is no nearby source of spruce (the most common trees in New Mexico are Rocky Mountain Juniper, Ponderosa Pine, and New Mexico Locust)