Author and historian Mary J. Straw Cook researched documents connected to the chapel and discovered that the woodworker who built the staircase was a Frenchman by the name of Francois-Jean Rochas. She found an article in a newspaper about Rochas’s death and that he was the craftsman behind the beautiful staircase. Cook also found an entry in the Sisters’ books that revealed a payment for wood to Rochas. Rochas came to the States exclusively for the staircase and brought the wood from France.
