Loretto Chapel

Gothic Revival in a city of adobe — the Loretto Chapel was already an outlier before anyone climbed its staircase. Commissioned in 1873 by the Sisters of Loretto for their girls' school, it was modeled on the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, with pointed arches, spires, and stained glass imported from France via the Santa Fe Trail. Its staircase — 20 feet of helix, no central support, held together with wooden pegs — was built sometime between 1877 and 1881 by a carpenter whose identity has never been confirmed. The sisters called it miraculous. Architects still argue about it.