Santa Fe Staircase Wood

There is another detail that has just increased the belief in the supposed.

Santa fe staircase wood. When the loretto chapel was completed in 1878 there was no way to access the choir loft twenty two feet above. However the wood has now been identified as spruce but which of the ten spruce species in north america remains a mystery. Whatever the wood that was used it was not indigenous to the santa fe area. The inner stringer consists of seven wooden segments joined together with glue while the longer outer stringer has nine segments.

His name was francois jean frenchy rochas an expert woodworker who emigrated from france in 1880 and arrived in santa fe right around the time the staircase was built. It s said that when historian mary j. The microscopic technical characteristics of the speciman wood smple from the staircase in the loretto chapel in santa fe new mexico were examined under a variable power hand lens for general characteristics and under a compound microscope at the magnifications varying between 50x to 450x both macroscopic and microscopic views of the cross sections and longitudinal samples were observed and the intracellular characteristics were ccompared to other similar genera and species in an effort to. Straw cook researched the stairs for a book she was writing she found information in an 1881 nun s daybook that a man named rochas was paid for wood.

The wood used in the construction of the loretto staircase has been a subject of contention for years now. A modern analysis revealed the wood to be spruce but a variety that nobody was familiar with. This is because there has not been a large enough sample taken to determine the exact species. Santa fe new mexican offers an alternative explanation for the amazing staircase.

Three mysteries surround the spiral staircase in the loretto chapel. It is built without the usual central column or support beams. The identity of its builder the type of wood used and the physics of its construction. It was constructed without using nails or glue only wooden pegs.

They have checked and found out that the type of wood used to build the staircase does not exist in the entire region. In addition to evidence that linked rochas to another french contractor who worked on the chapel cook found an 1895 death notice in the new mexican explicitly naming rochas as the builder of the handsome staircase in the loretto chapel. It was concluded that the closest possible locale for wood of this type would have been somewhere like alaska. The wood used for the staircase wasn t native to the santa fe region which was also a curiosity at the time.