He was teetering on the edge of death in one of the worst places to need immediate help: a to-hell-and-gone village 80 miles from Corner Brook on Newfoundland's west coast. Douglas, the scion of the already well-to-do builder Seymour Durst, was entranced with the brave notion rampant in the 1970s of doing it all on his own. He and Susanne, the young Danish girl he tried to marry almost from the moment he first clapped eyes on her--like many hippy couples at the time--tried to "get away from it all."

They settled in Woody Point, an out-of-the-way fishing village. They had a fixer-upper, a ramshackle house needing a lot of work. Besides the hammering and sawing and painting Douglas installed a hot water heater for the coming winter.

On October 17, 1972, the boiler exploded. Like shrapnel, a piece of metal went through his right calf. It severed a nerve and also destroyed a big piece of the fibula. It was clear that Douglas needed help, big time help, and he needed it now.

He was bundled into a flat bed truck and tossed and turned and jostled and banged over 40 miles of rutted dirt road, and then sped over 40 miles of paved road to Corner Brook, on the island's west coast. Doctors cleaned the wound, sewed him up and apparently figured he'd be lucky if he didn't lose half his leg.

Losing a leg didn't occur to him.

"I knew I was dying," Douglas recalls. "It wasn't an unpleasant experience. I wasn't afraid. I was really calm. I looked at it as a fact. I was dying. It seemed such a natural thing. Susanne was with me. She kept saying, 'You can't go.' And so I didn't."

For a 27-year-old with two young children to coolly contemplate an untimely death reveals the prospect that he could go through life able to face anything. It is no surprise that he thinks the last stanza of Invictus truly fits him:

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

As the reigning figure in the Durst Organization, one of New York's largest and oldest privately owned real estate firms, 58-year-old Douglas Durst has bordered upon being regarded as a maverick in the fiercely competitive, egocentric, power-hungry world of New York master builders.
He carved a niche for himself by a dedicated commitment to protecting the environment. But his claim to fame, the darling of his life's work thus far, rises 48 stories at 4 Times Square. It is the Conde Nast building, the one that had some other realtors convinced that Douglas was crazy.

First off, they felt the project violated the builder-developer's Eleventh Commandment: "Thou shalt not put a shovel in the ground, nor disturb even an ounce of earth, until thou hast an anchor tenant and leases covering 60 percent of the building."

There was no anchor tenant when the project got underway, but Conde Nast came aboard a month later followed by Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, the huge law firm. They signed leases for 80 percent of the space. (Douglas was so grateful he engineered a special concession for Si Newhouse, major domo in Conde Nast. Of the 3,800 windows in the building, the only ones a tenant can open and close are in his office. Newhouse also is the one person allowed to bring his dog into the building. The only exception is for people with guide dogs).

Four Times Square is also known as the "Green building" because of its many environmentally positive features. The F.W. Dodge New York Construction News, a bible in the industry, gushed over the structure as a breakthrough venture and said it was "proud to recognize The Durst Organization as its 2001 Owner and Developer of the Year."

It was cited as being environmentally responsible. It had photovoltaic panels converting sunlight into into electricity, fuel cells creating electricity from natural gas, huge low-glare windows to reduce need for artificial light, built-in waste chutes to facilitate recycling, fresh air pumps, among other things. And 40 percent of the building was made of recycled or existing materials.

But there was disappointment, as well. There has been no discernible rush among other builder-developers to toss up edifices that emulate the Durst Doctrine: if you can't do better, at least do no harm.

"I thought other builders would follow the environmental aspects of 4 Times Square," Douglas Durst says, "but so few have and none to the degree I went."

He attributes the success of 4 Times Square to a strategy to keep the various elements involved in construction and development in constant communication. "One major problem in this industry is the back-biting and fingerpointing that goes on with the architect and contractor and builder and even tenants," says Douglas. "My cousin, Jody Durst, who is a co-president, and I decided on having a succession of retreats involving the architect, Fox and Fowle, and the contractor, Tishman Realty. That way we dealt with problems before they became problems. Everyone was involved in solving not blaming."

Durst, in his fashion, is shaping himself into a Pygmalion, striving to also achieve some kind of perfection and beauty. But unlike Pygmalion no matter how breathtaking a Galatea he creates, Douglas has determined it will never be the be-all and end-all of life.

"There are two things I learned from my grandfather and father that I sort of always keep in mind," says Douglas, who represents the third Durst generation. "My grandfather, Joseph, who started this business in 1915, told me, 'Never fall in love with bricks and mortar.' To me, that meant you had to be ready at anytime to give it up, to sell it. And my father, Seymour, said we shouldn't ever build anything we couldn't walk to. In other words close at hand and constant involvement."

Another tenet handed down through the years is that in leasing space the Dursts do not press for the last and highest dollar nor give up and settle for the bottom dollar.

Whether or not that's truly been the guiding light in the rise of the Durst dynasty, it certainly has paid off. Today, the Durst Organization--which has a reputation of honoring and abiding by handshake deals--has a real estate portfolio of 7.5 million square feet in 10 office buildings. It remains one of New York's largest and oldest privately owned real estate firms. Douglas Durst acknowledges an amassed fortune of $2 billion.

The late Seymour Durst, one of the bevy of heavyweight, very savvy builder-developers in perhaps America's toughest, most competitive real estate market, once explained to Douglas why the Dursts lost a drawn-out court battle:

"We had good lawyers,' he said, "but they had better judges."

One of their landmark battles involved the fate of the Luxor Baths, a celebrated gathering spot for the big time Broadway crowd of the '30s and '40s. Walter Winchell, Jack Dempsey, Damon Runyon graced the splendor of the Luxor. In its heyday, the nine-story building at 121 West 46th St., was New York City's classiest whorehouse.

In the 1970s amid the growing popularity of massage parlors, the Luxor was again in operation, presumably as a massage parlor. Seymour Durst was the landlord and his detractors tried to paint him as a whorehouse operator. The operators, Betty Vicedomini and her son, Peter, stymied Durst's efforts to e vict them as well as trumping shutdown moves by the Mayor's office, the police department, health department, fire department, buildings department, public works department, Department of Rent and Housing Maintenance.

Douglas, then 30, came up with a strategy to emerge from the mess. They sold the building to the Vicedominis, holding an $800,000 second mortgage.

"The city police wouldn't drop their pants to prove prostitution. So we hired private detectives to gather evidence. The City was able to close them as a public nuisance and, as I predicted, they defaulted on the mortgage. We got the property back and tore it down. It's an office building now."

Seymour Durst often drew public attention as an inveterate commentator on municipal issues. He was given to writing to newspaper editors to express his views. And he was the force behind a so-called zipper message that crawled in moving lights on an Avenue of the America building, between 42nd and 43rd streets. It called attention to the nation's spiraling deficit. The rapidly moving lights, first turned on in 1989, kept spewing numbers of the mounting deficit 24 hours a day. At that point it was about $3 trillion.

"We stopped it in 2000 when the budget was balanced," explains Douglas. The deficit was then $5.6 trillion. On July 11, when the deficit hit $6.1 trillion, Douglas turned it back on.

In comparison to his father, Douglas is generally regarded as taciturn. Indeed, he seems to be a man of few words, but those closest to him warn that it isn't because he doesn't know the words or have a lot to say but that it is because he is shy.

His role as a master builder with a conscience, as a man who can say without blushing that "being environmental is as much about hugging money as hugging trees," probably was fashioned during the flower child era of the 1960s. He was a student at Berkeley, focused on foreign affairs and harboring the notion of going into the foreign service. But in graduate school in New York, he concentrated on urban development.

At a New Year's Eve party welcoming 1967, however, he concentrated on Susanne Deichmann, a student from Denmark, whose father was the preeminent landscape designer. After a week, to almost universal surprise, he proposed. After a month, she said maybe. Another month and it was yes. They got married in Copenhagen in September. Douglas was 22, and Susanne, 21.

In short order, they produced Anita and Alexander and moved to Ibiza, Spain, where her family had long gathered for vacations.

"Because I was involved in my first solo real estate deal, I was commuting from New York to Ibiza," Douglas recalls. "What I did basically was compare the time spent commuting from Katonah to the city and then from the city to Ibiza. The time was pretty close, but what I didn't really take into account was jet lag."

The solo project, undertaken while Douglas was still in graduate school, was an apartment building on 78th and Columbus. It had some great features and won an American Institute of Architecture award. "It had nothing to do with the ecology," he says. "It was a showcase beauty and a financial disaster because of a downturn in the economy. We were five years ahead of the market."

Did he learn anything from that brush with financial disaster?

"Yes. I learned to have all my finances in order and then decide what risks were worth taking."

It was after this that he had his near-death experience. Even though the doctors said he'd never walk again, he went into intensive rehabilitation for a year and regained use of his leg. Today, he's an aggressive tennis player and regularly rides horses and bikes. He usually arises at 6 AM, does yoga and tai chi and swims.

And what, if anything, did he learn from that brush with death?

"Well, that ended with my 'getting away from it all' period. It told me I can't escape my fate, and my fate was to be in New York. I've never had a serious accident in New York." Apparently he forgot about a serious fall from a horse a few years back, shattering a wrist. Rather than having a cast, the broken bones were placed into position and held there by wires that poked through his skin. It formed a gruesome looking sculpture.

"What it also proved to me was that if I set my mind to do something, I can do it and will do it. I've always believed that about myself. I am convinced of it."

Infected by a desire to support environmentally progressive activities on a personal level, Douglas decided to try his hand at organic farming, and in 1990 he became a partner with Raymond McEnroe in McEnroe Organic Farm, a 500-acre spread in Millerton, NY. He jumped in with both feet and landed amidst a bunch of howling neighbors.

Organic farming relies on composting of horse manure as well as fecal matter from cattle, chickens, hogs. McEnroe boasted of having the most advanced, State-of-the-art compost rows and outstanding runoff controls, including clay lined holding ponds, rock filters, back-up pumps and sod beds. The state checked local wells and found no contamination from the farm.

An opposition group, Citizens for North East, Inc., went to court and also applied pressure on local governing boards to shut down composting operations because of a threat to "the area's health and property values."

In a 1990 letter, a Dutchess County neighbor wrote Douglas, "Since you are neither a resident of the community nor a 'weekender,' you are cast in a particularly bad light." The not-so-subtle letter went on to say the opposition included people "influential in both the town of North East and in the City."

That didn't faze or intimidate the Dursts and today the farm is robust and busy as ever, selling produce from a stand on Route 22 near Millerton. Meat from cattle is sold at Eli Zabar's shop on the East Side of Manhattan. And, of course, it graces the Dursts's table.

The Dursts are involved in at least 10 different do-good and watchdog organizations dedicated to ecological matters and to fostering the arts. Right now his daughter, Anita, is busy using Durst's four unoccupied 42nd Street theaters as rent-free venues for struggling playwrights, screen writers, choreographers, dancers, singers, composers, costume designers, set designers, lighting designers, stage craftsmen, directors, producers, musicians, visual artists. It's been a boon for experimental theater. She also figures she's helped to erase the tawdry image of 42nd street by cl;osing down a peep show and turning it into a visual arts gallery.

Anita says that though she occasionally sits in on meetings in her father's office at 1155 Avenue of the Americas, it's unlikely she'll ever have an active role as a fourth generation participant along with her siblings. Her brother, Alexander, 31, is a dedicated triathalon athlete now heading for an MBA, concentrating on real estate, at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and sister, Helena, 25, now at Baruch College, has a regular gig at the company.

"I'm in love with the theater, with arts of all sorts," says Anita. "So that's where I'll stay." Last year, she was nominated by the Drama Desk as best supporting actress for her role in an off-Broadway production of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.

She vigorously applauds her father's commitment to improving the environment whether its for innovations in construction or promoting a water taxi.

The water taxis have the color motif of Yellow Cabs and can carry about 100 passengers each. "After the September attack on the World Trade Centers, it seemed to me there would be a real need for transport that could serve lower Manhattan. The water taxi could probably serve 10,000 people a day and at the same time reduce the amount of fuel used, the pollution produced and relieve road congestion normally required to move 10,000 people," Douglas Durst said.

Durst put $6 million into the enterprise. The taxis pop along the Manhattan shoreline in the Hudson River from 42nd St. to Brooklyn's Fulton Landing in the East River.

"I know that this will help the environment," he says.

To do the environmentally right thing, Douglas and Susanne recently leveled the family home at Katonah, NY. It was a lovely estate with the requisite tennis court, swimming pool and flower and vegetable garden. But they could no longer tolerate the notion that because of its ancient design and construction it was spewing heat into bedrock, a terrible loss of energy. A new, well-insulated, energy conserving four-bedroom home--designed to capture natural light--is being built.

His involvement in support of the environment has led to various honors. Allegheny College, which has a reputation as having one of the nation's most advanced environmental programs, has given Douglas an honorary doctorate, as has the City University of New York.

What's ahead? Will he build a bigger and better 4 Times Square? Does he have any patience with the master builders who historically huff and puff as they pay allegiance to the mantra: bigger is better, bigger is better?

God no. Durst says buildings should be limited to 50 stories. Building higher is just vanity and an affront to having sustainable ecology. "If you keep adding stories you create very costly structures, to build and operate," he says. "When he was governor, Nelson Rockefeller pushed for towering skyscrapers such as the World Trade Centers. They always had problems with vacancies."

One of the things that any builder-developer needs in New York, besides money, is patience. It took the Dursts 30 years to get a piece of Manhattan property owned by the Maidman family in order to have a parcel to build an office building. "For things like real estate, I can see 20 or 30 years like tomorrow," says Douglas. "Otherwise, I'm impatient and 20 seconds can be too long. I can say that if you are pitching me on any kind of project, if you can't do it in 20 minutes, it's a dead deal."

He's compelled to draw upon reserves of patience when it comes to dealing with a sprawling family. The original partners in the Durst Organization were the four brothers of his father's generation. Now there are at least 13 main players involved, with vested interests and some with agendas that Douglas and Jody feel might not pay allegiance to the Durst tradition of how to do business.

One family member, Douglas's brother, Bobby, is in a Texas jail awaiting trial on murder charges. Douglas's pain is palpable.

"I am so sad," he says. After some hesitation, he adds, "I can't figure out how you can know someone for 58 years and then learn you do not know them at all."

Whatever the problems that arise or may arise, Douglas clearly is embarked on a mission to enlarge the compass of builder-developer. He makes no pretension toward being a social scientist but foresees the need and the opportunity to address long term issues relating to co-generation of energy, waste disposal, fresh air, potable water, quality food.

It was that sort of dedication which was acknowledged by the Natural Resources Defense Council when it presented the Durst Organization with its 2001 Forces for Nature Award. It called 4 Times Square "the first project of its size to adopt standards for energy efficiency,indoor ecology and sustainable materials."

There are two commercial Durst projects now on the boards. One is One Bryant Park, the $650 million retail and office complex with 1.65 million square at 42nd and the Avenue of the Americas. In this case, Douglas is trying to arrange signing a tenant for at least 30 percent of the space before going ahead. That's because of uncertainty about the economy. "It will incorporate such designs as under-the-floor air conditioning, which has been very successful in Europe, have more efficient use of water, and concrete with a higher degree of fly ash, among other things," says Douglas. "It will be better than Four Times Square."

The other project, for which ground has been broken, is the $250 million, 300,000 square feet New York Cybercenter on 57th Street between 11th and 12th Avenues. It carries the blueprint for a more adventurous foray into the world of power and its efficient production and distribution. It is described as the first high-availability telecom/data center to contain an on-site, privately owned, independently certified co-generation facility.

There is no identified tenant as yet. But Douglas says, "I feel if I build it, they will come." That fits in with the organization's legendary philosophy that it's better to have long term impact on the environment and long term yield than immediate profit.

How would Douglas Durst like to be thought of?

"On my tombstone, let it say: 'Wherever you go, leave it a better place.'"