Twisting and Turning: Spiral Staircases in Photographs

When I was a child, my cousins’ house had an iron spiral staircase that led to a sunlit lofted space. To my young eyes, these stairs seemed to come straight out of a fairy tale – a view that was perhaps inspired by a reading of Jack in the Beanstalk. Spiral staircases are just rare enough that an encounter in the real world still feels special, and the Library of Congress collections include dozens of images featuring a variety of styles for us to virtually explore.

The whimsical – and unique – staircase below, from the Wharton Esherick House & Studio in Pennsylvania, is probably my favorite example from the collections. This photograph, like many others in this post, was taken as part of a Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) of the site. The project documentation notes that Esherick, an artist and designer, carved the shaft of the staircase from the trunk of a single red oak tree:

Elegant corkscrewing staircases in stately residences make an appearance in a number of HABS photographs. This one is situated in the Captain Robert Bennett Forbes House in Milton, Massachusetts:

This photograph of a graceful spiral stairway was taken by Frances Benjamin Johnston as part of an early twentieth-century photographic survey of Southern U.S. architecture. The house was built in 1812 in Natchez, Mississippi and later purchased by Stephen Duncan, an antebellum cotton planter and one of the largest owners of enslaved people in the American South, who used part of his resulting fortune to increase the size of the residence.

Some spiral stairways are very grand indeed, such as the one below, which was built in the 16^th century for the Château Royal de Blois in France’s Loire Valley. The external positioning of the elaborate stone staircase makes it even more eye-catching.

Images of spiral stairways at occupational sites are common, such as in the below photograph of a fire station at Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois. The iron staircase dominates the scene, but the image contains other fascinating details, such as a fire pole visible on the left, and uniform jackets and hats hung near the floor. Text-dense signage is posted on the far wall.

This spiral staircase is located within a decommissioned nuclear test reactor facility in Idaho. The combination of the location, the shadows on the wall, and the sign at the bottom reading “Limited access: use only as absolutely necessary” create a disquieting effect. One wonders what might have prompted someone to use it, and what they would have found at the top.

Some of the most dramatic photographs of spiral staircases in the collections are those taken from below, such as this view of a lighthouse stairway at Cape Lookout in North Carolina:

This view of a coiling stairway at the New Post Office Building in Washington, D.C., also seen from below, has an almost surrealist quality:

Views from above are just as striking, as this beautifully centered image of the stairway at the Shaker Centre Family Trustees’ Office in Kentucky demonstrates. This and the photo above were both taken by veteran HABS photographer Jack Boucher, thirty years apart.

Feel free to explore the online catalog for more images and share your favorites with us.

Learn More:

• View more images of spiral staircases.
• Explore the Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey (HABS/HAER/HALS) collections.
• Read other Picture This blog posts featuring images from the HABS/HAER /HALS collections.