JOSEPH DRUFFEL, R.I.P. : Architect for the poor - Brief Article - Obituary

Commonweal, August 13, 1999 by Peter Steinfels

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. "I think it's the light," she said.

It was indeed the light. This odd, low church, with its flat ceiling, squats on the ground floor beneath several stories of parish school and rectory. 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.

The light was Joe's work. "Joseph Druffel, 60, Architect for the Poor," read the headline over his obituary in the New York Times. "Mr. Druffel spent most of his career on projects for poor people," it explained. "He worked with a number of organizations in the South Bronx, East Harlem and the West Side of Manhattan...helping design, renovate, and build shelters, housing, and other structures."

Architect for friends, too, for whom he would design a new little this or that to make their apartments more livable. And architect for Commonweal, which fell under both those headings.

In 1986, when the magazine was forced by a 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. 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. 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. Redeploying all he could of the existing office's fixtures, he quickly recreated much of its ambiance in a new space.

Light was the key. "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. 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.

She mentioned his efforts to provide as much natural light as possible for those whose offices were away from windows. It was that way at Commonweal, too. 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. There was also one place where Joe would spare no expense: the light fixtures. Editors, like surgeons, had to have the very best. 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. Joe went with two friends on a weekend and personally salvaged them. They are now lighting classrooms at a neighborhood parochial school and being put to other good uses.

At Saint Gregory's, we sang: "I who made the stars of night, I will make their darkness bright. Who will bear my light to them? Whom shall I send?"

Like light, Joe was quiet. "Quiet, peaceful, always there, soft-spoken, precise, accurate, methodical...unassuming, real...." Sister Nerney ticked off some of the ways she had heard Joe's friends describe him. 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 himself. He gave the impression of being extremely shy. It never kept him from quietly prevailing over the city bureaucracy or patiently getting a job done just the way he wanted.

Joe had a different idea of the architect's calling than the one typically featured in stories about gorgeous homes, corporate headquarters, or contemporary art museums, a different idea than the one honored by big commissions or prestigious awards. Designing an impressive church was less crucial to him than redoing 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. That was one of the reasons he had left an architectural firm twenty years earlier. 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.

Like light, Joe could be elusive. Especially about being paid. He never raised the matter. Pay me what you can, when you can, was the message he conveyed. He lived modestly-he could hardly have done otherwise-but he was accustomed to serving those whose resources were slimmer and whose burdens heavier. 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.