Joseph Druffel, R.I.P.
Steinfels, Peter
Peter Steinfels JOSEPH DRUFFEL, R.I.P. Architect for the poor Something is different," my wife Peggy said as we entered Saint Gregory the Great Church on West 90th Street in Manhattan, where we...
...Maneuvering within an absolutely minimal budget, he took raw space in a nondescript building on a virtual alley and created a set of offices, handsome, airy, and congenial, where it was a pleasure to work...
...Like light, Joe was quiet...
...Editors, like surgeons, had to have the very best...
...Redeploying all he could of the existing office's fixtures, he quickly recreated much of its ambiance in a new space...
...Especially about being paid...
...Joseph Druffel, 60, Architect for the Poor," read the headline over his obituary in the New York Times...
...Whom shall I send...
...Sister Nerney ticked off some of the ways she had heard Joe's friends describe him...
...This odd, low church, with its flat ceiling, squats on the ground floor beneath several stories of parish school and rectory...
...The light was Joe's work...
...She mentioned his efforts to provide as much natural light as possible for those whose offices were away from windows...
...Designing an impres- church was less crucial to him than re- doing the lights or (even in his last illness) drawing up plans for a sidewalk renovation at the struggling parish where he worshiped and volunteered in the soup kitchen...
...Who will bear my light to them...
...And architect for Commonweal, which fell under both those headings...
...On this June day it had a new glow throughout, and what had been a dull horizontal mural of saints behind the altar now came to life...
...It was indeed the light...
...Quiet, peaceful, always there, soft-spoken, precise, accurate, methodical...unassuming, real...
...That was one of the reasons he had left an architectural firm twenty years earlier...
...Light and air were what he looked for in creating a space," said Sister Mary Nerney in a moving eulogy at Joe's memorial Mass...
...Pay me what you can, when you can, was the message he conveyed...
...In 1997, it became apparent that those painstakingly selected Dutch Street fixtures could not be reused in the new offices and, worse, might have to be abandoned altogether...
...In 1986, when the magazine was forced bv sharp rent increase to move from its long-occupied Madison Avenue offices in midtown Manhattan, Joe turned a potential disaster on Dutch Street into a triumph...
...Commonweal IO August 13,1999...
...And where one section of the Dutch Street office extended beyond the floor above, he made an ordinary conference space special by persuading the landlord to allow a hole to be cut in the concrete roof for a skylight...
...It never kept him from quietly prevail- ing over the city bureaucracy or patiently getting a job done just the way he wanted...
...He gave the impression of being extremely shy...
...Peter Steinf els, a former Commonweal editor, writes the biweekly "Beliefs" column for the New York Times...
...He had worked with her on a series of projects—play rooms, apartments, offices, whatever was needed for her programs combating domestic violence and aiding incarcerated women, ex-offenders, and their children...
...He never raised the matter...
...At Saint Gregory's, we sang: "I who made the stars of night, I will make their darkness bright...
...There was also one place where Joe would spare no expense: the light fixtures...
...Architect for the poor Something is different," my wife Peggy said as we entered Saint Gregory the Great Church on West 90th Street in Manhattan, where we had been parishioners a quarter-century ago and where family and friends were now gathering for the memorial Mass for Joseph Druffel...
...Druffel spent most of his career on projects for poor people," it e\- plained...
...Ten years later, when renewal of the magazine's lease unexpectedly fell victim to a grand real estate scheme, Joe came to the rescue again...
...He lived modestly—he could hardly have done otherwise—but he was accustomed to serving those whose resources were slimmer and whose burdens heavier...
...Joe had a different idea of the archi tect's calling than the one typically fea- 1 tured in stories about gorgeous homes, J corporate headquarters, or contemporary art museums, a different idea than tne one h°norecl by big commissions or prestigious awards...
...Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord...
...And may perpetual light shine upon him...
...He worked with a number of or- ganizations in the South Bronx, East Harlem and the West Side of Manhat- tan...helping design, renovate, and build shelters, housing, and other structures...
...Joe went with two friends on a weekend and personally salvaged them...
...Light was the key...
...Like light, Joe could be elusive...
...They were well represented and sang heartily at his memorial Mass, where Sister Nerney speculated that among the many mansions of the Lord there must be some in need of rehabbing...
...They are now lighting classrooms at a neighborhood parochial school and being put to other good uses...
...Joe could present his ideas so diffidently that it was hard to tell whether he was waiting for your response or still thinking the matter over him- self...
...And while it is hard to think of a better tribute than "architect for the poor," Joe was also an architect with the poor, devoting himself to sweat-equity projects, patiently training ex-offender women in the essentials of construction and carpentry...
...It was that way at Commonweal, too...
...Architect for friends, too, for whom he would design a new little this or that to make their apartments more livable...
...I think if s the light," she said...
Vol. 126 • August 1999 • No. 14
