Loretto Chapel staircase construction

The Loretto Chapel staircase construction is a Santa Fe legend in which a mysterious carpenter solves the nuns’ architectural problem, completes a celebrated spiral staircase, and disappears. In the novel, the story becomes both a practical building crisis and a test of belief: the nuns interpret the carpenter as Saint Joseph, while Lizzy Enders, who has spoken with him, refuses to accept that explanation outright.

The Problem at the Chapel

The legend begins with a real architectural difficulty. When the Chapel of Loretto was completed in 1878, its choir loft had no staircase. The Sisters of Loretto had consulted builders, carpenters, and architects, but the solutions they were offered were unsatisfactory: a conventional staircase would take up too much room, rebuilding the choir loft would be expensive, and a ladder remained the other suggested option. The practical problem was therefore also a matter of how the chapel could be used without sacrificing space or undertaking costly reconstruction.

The Sisters of Loretto had been brought from Kentucky to Santa Fe in 1852 by Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy to run the Academy of Our Lady of Light, the girls’ school attached to the chapel. When conventional expertise failed to provide an acceptable answer, the sisters began a novena to Saint Joseph. The legend places their religious appeal beside the ordinary work of finding a builder: the staircase must be made, but the identity and arrival of the person who can make it will acquire a meaning beyond carpentry.

The Carpenter and His Work

In the version recounted in the novel’s author’s note, a beggar-man carpenter arrives with a mule and only three tools: a hammer, a T square, and a saw. Accounts differ about how long he worked. Some say two weeks; others say several months. However long the construction took, the resulting staircase makes the carpenter’s apparent lack of resources part of the story’s mystery rather than evidence of failure. It makes two complete circles and has thirty-three steps.

The carpenter’s disappearance completes the legend. The sisters plan a feast to honor him, but he is nowhere to be found. Men at the lumberyard where Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy had an account for him say they have never seen him, and the carpenter never comes to collect his pay. He is never seen again. The sisters conclude that the beggar-man was Saint Joseph. The disappearance does not prove that conclusion; instead, it leaves the carpenter’s identity open to the explanation the sisters find most compelling.

The Novel’s Retelling

The novel turns that local legend into a personal encounter. Lizzy brings a hungry, unemployed carpenter to the bishop’s attention because he is looking for work and can build the staircase the chapel needs. The bishop recognizes the dilemma and agrees to have the carpenter inspect it. His response also recalls the sisters’ novena and his own prayers, while acknowledging that he cannot simply perform the miracle they expect of him. The carpenter’s work thus begins with a practical decision, not an established claim that he is a saint.

When the girls and nuns gather in the church to see the finished staircase, its polished circular form and thirty-three carefully trimmed steps make the achievement visible to the whole community. The carpenter has already gone: Ramona finds the staircase complete when she takes him supper. Mother Magdalena interprets his absence as confirmation that Saint Joseph came in the carpenter’s guise, and the nuns kneel to pray. Lizzy instead runs from the chapel. She knows the carpenter as someone who spoke with her, held her kitten, advised her about her father, and felt hurt when the girls did not want him around. Those remembered interactions make the nuns’ certainty difficult for her to share.

Material Legacy and Unresolved Belief

The author’s note distinguishes the novel’s invention from the staircase legend that inspired it, without settling whether the supernatural explanation is true. It reports that the staircase still stands in the chapel, which Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy had patterned after the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. A banister was added in 1883; the reported original construction uses wooden pegs rather than nails. Visitors have come from around the world, and architectural experts have examined the staircase, including its wood, which the author’s note says they could not account for and determined was not found anywhere in New Mexico.

Within the novel, the staircase’s material presence and the uncertainty around its maker remain in productive tension. Lizzy’s account leaves one small opening for belief: the blind cat is no longer blind after the carpenter holds her. Yet the author explicitly leaves the question of whether the carpenter was Saint Joseph for the reader, just as the historical legend remains undecided. The staircase can therefore be regarded at once as a remarkable piece of work, the subject of a religious interpretation, and the occasion for Lizzy to weigh what she has witnessed against what others believe.