Who Built the Loretto Staircase? The Carpenter Mystery & the Rochas Theory
Who actually built the Loretto Chapel staircase? There are two answers, and the honest version holds both. The legend says a mysterious stranger appeared in answer to prayer, built it, and vanished.
The historical record points to a real, named man: a reclusive French carpenter called François-Jean “Frenchy” Rochas. Here is the evidence for each, and what remains genuinely unknown.
The legend’s answer: a mysterious stranger
By tradition, after the Sisters of Loretto finished a nine-day novena to St. Joseph, a stranger appeared at the chapel with a donkey and a few simple tools. Over the following months he built the elegant spiral stair, then left without collecting payment or giving his name.
Because St. Joseph is the patron saint of carpenters, many came to believe the carpenter was St. Joseph, answering the sisters’ prayer in person. The faith dimension of the story is covered on the St. Joseph legend page.
The historian’s answer: François-Jean “Frenchy” Rochas
Santa Fe historian Mary Jean Straw Cook, in research published in her book Loretto: The Sisters and Their Santa Fe Chapel (Museum of New Mexico Press), identified the probable builder as François-Jean “Frenchy” Rochas (1843–1894), a reclusive French rancher and carpenter who lived in the Dog Canyon area of southern New Mexico.
Two surviving documents anchor the case.
The evidence
An 1895 death notice in the Santa Fe New Mexican described Rochas, who had been murdered, as a Frenchman “favorably known in Santa Fe as an expert worker in wood,” adding that he “built the handsome staircase in the Loretto chapel and at St. Vincent sanitarium.”
Source: Santa Fe New Mexican, 1895 (Rochas obituary/death notice)An entry in the Sisters’ own logbook records $150 paid for wood in 1881, attributed to “Mr. Rochas” — documentary evidence that he did carpentry-related work for the convent.
Source: Sisters of Loretto convent logbook, 1881 (cited by M. J. Straw Cook)The 1895 notice is especially important because it names two staircases — the Loretto chapel and one at the St. Vincent sanitarium — tying Rochas to a second, now-lost spiral stair that corroborates his skill (more on that in the planned St. Vincent piece).
Two more details tighten the case. Among Rochas’s possessions at his death was an unmailed letter to Quintus Monier, who oversaw church construction for Archbishop Lamy’s diocese — the office that would have hired a carpenter for the chapel — along with two unsent letters to Lamy himself. And his tool chest was a serious woodworker’s: five saws, nine planes, nineteen moulding planes, and, tellingly, a pair of trammel points “for drawing large circles” — the very instrument you would reach for to lay out a spiral.
Contested: the “$150 for wood” logbook line isn’t airtight. John Clark, writing in the National Catholic Register, reads the same memo as “Paid for wood — Mr. Rochas for N. School,” arguing it refers to a nearby school the sisters hired him to build, and points out that the logbook never mentions a staircase at all. Other sources quote it more plainly as “Paid for wood Mr. Rochas, $150.00.” Either reading confirms Rochas did paid woodwork for the sisters; what the line does not do, on its own, is name the stair.
A candidate-builder timeline
- 1843 — François-Jean Rochas born in France.
- 1878 — Loretto Chapel consecrated; the choir loft has no stair. The legend of the novena and the mysterious carpenter begins here.
- 1881 — Sisters’ logbook records $150 “paid for wood — Mr. Rochas.”
- 1894–95 — Rochas dies (murdered); the 1895 Santa Fe New Mexican credits him with the Loretto and St. Vincent staircases.
- 1980s–2000s — Mary Jean Straw Cook assembles the documentary case and names Rochas as the probable builder.
- Today — The chapel still presents the stair as unexplained; the Rochas identification is strong but circumstantial.
The Compagnons angle
Cook further theorized that Rochas may have belonged to the Compagnons du Devoir, a centuries-old French guild of master craftsmen, and that he might have come to Santa Fe specifically for the job — possibly even shipping the wood from France.
This would help explain the staircase’s sophisticated joinery and the unusual wood. It is a plausible and attractive theory, but it remains a theory.
Contested: the dates of Rochas’s arrival in the Americas don’t line up cleanly across sources — some accounts say he emigrated around 1880, others that he had settled in the region as early as c.1846. We flag this openly rather than pick one: the discrepancy is unresolved, and it bears on whether he could have come “specifically” for the 1878–81 staircase.
Why it stayed a “mystery”
Here’s the reframing the legend leaves out, noted chiefly in the skeptical literature (Joe Nickell): the carpenter’s identity was probably not mysterious to the Santa Feans of the 1880s and 1890s. A local newspaper named him in print.
The “mystery” set in only after that generation died and the personal memory faded — a mystery created by forgetting, not by magic.
What remains genuinely unknown
To be honest about the limits: the Rochas case is strong but circumstantial. The logbook records a payment for wood, not explicitly for building the stair; the 1895 notice is a secondhand obituary, not a contract. No signed builder’s record survives.
So, while Rochas is by far the best-supported candidate, the chapel can fairly continue to present the builder as not definitively proven — and the human story (a master craftsman, all but erased from the record) stays quietly remarkable.
Keep exploring
- Back to the Loretto Chapel staircase overview
- How the staircase works
- What wood is it made of? (Did Rochas ship it?)
- Debunked or miracle? Every claim vs the evidence
Researched & fact-checked by the Loretto Volunteers Editorial Team
Loretto Volunteers is an independent research project documenting the history, architecture, and enduring mystery of the Loretto Chapel staircase. We work from primary and archival sources and show our evidence. Last reviewed: June 2026.