John Donahoe recently showed off his home at 108 Grand St. in downtown Jersey City, a three-story brick Victorian built in 1861. Donahoe, along with his brother David, restores old homes in Jersey City. But some of the features in the home, which he bought two years ago and spent year and a half restoring, are extra special. The marble bathroom floors and antique lamps were left behind by one of the previous occupants of the house, who also left a large legacy of civic activism in Jersey City for nearly 30 years.
The man’s name was Joseph R. Duffy, or Joe Duffy, as he was commonly known.
The story of Joe Duffy
Born in 1910 in the Paulus Hook area, Duffy was a graduate of Jersey City schools and Fordham University. He was an accountant for Texaco Oil in New York for 40 years until his retirement in 1976. He was also a World War II veteran.
The story of Joe Duffy is tied to the rise of citizen activists in Jersey City from the 1960s to the 1980’s such as Owen Grundy, Ted Conrad, Morris Pesin, and Audrey Zapp.
Duffy was in the same pantheon as those aforementioned individuals, who worked to preserve parks and improve the quality of life in Jersey City. Yet, Duffy had his own fiery yet analytical style when addressing the City Council, the Planning Board or Hudson County Freeholders on issues pertaining to encroaching development, historic preservation in his beloved Paulus Hook neighborhood, and tax abatements.
Yet Duffy was anything but a radical, wearing a suit with an “I Love Jersey City” button and thick-rimmed black eyeglasses. And he lived the life of a bachelor, in the same house as his two sisters and mother, who loved to collect antiques and other items.
“Some admire me. Some are lukewarm, and I guess some hate me.” – Joe Duffy in a 1988 interview
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In a 1988 interview with Gold Coast Magazine, Duffy summed up how he was viewed by the community for his combative advocacy.
“A lot of people know me,” he said. “Some admire me. Some are lukewarm, and I guess some hate me.”
Remembering Joe
Local activist Yvonne Balcer recalls how she and her husband Charles met Duffy in the mid-1970s when they moved into their home near Van Vorst Park. They would see him at council meetings and other social gatherings just as he was forming the Paulus Hook Neighborhood Association, which exists to this day.
“He was always the first person to speak during the public speaking portion for the council, and he was very direct and would not take no for an answer,” Balcer said.
Barbara Bromirski, who runs the Bromirski Funeral Home on Warren Street, can still remember Duffy marching through the streets near his home in August 1979 to mark the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Paulus Hook, a Revolutionary War skirmish that fascinated him as a student of history. There is a monument to the battle at the southeast corner of Washington Street in Paulus Hook Park that Duffy was instrumental in having restored on that site.
“He was a lot of fun, he was a tough man, a little guy but once he made up his mind you couldn’t stop him,” Bromirski said.
Robert Byrne was a young Deputy City Clerk from 1982-1989 who remembered him not just as a “thoughtful and respectful” man who knew to aim the “slings and arrows” at the City Council, but also Duffy’s kind gesture of donating fans that were installed in the chambers.
While Duffy and his relatives no longer live in the house on Grand Street, the old lamps and furniture serve as a reminder of a man who was passionate about his family and passionate about his city.
Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com.