Big Duck

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The Big Duck
(National Register of Historic Places)
The Big Duck was constructed in the 1930s to help its owner's duck farming business.
Location:	Flanders, New York, Suffolk County, New York, USA
Coordinates:	40°54′18″N, 72°36′42″W
Built/Founded:	1930-31
Added to NRHP:	April 28, 1997^[1]
Governing body:	Private Ownership

The Big Duck is a ferrocement building in the shape of a duck located in Flanders, New York. It was originally built in 1931 by a duck farmer and used as a shop to sell ducks and duck eggs. The building has been moved several times.

1 History
2 "Duck" as a technical term
3 External links
4 Notes

[edit] History

The Big Duck is a prime example of literalism in advertising. The wood frame, wire mesh/concrete surface building was designed in the shape of a Pekin duck in order to house a retail poultry store. Constructed in 1930 and 1931 on a prime spot on the busy Main Street in the town of Riverhead on Long Island, New York, the building measures 15 feet wide, 30 feet long and 20 feet tall to the top of the head. The duck's eyes are made from Ford Model T tail lights and the interior floor space is confined to 11 feet by 15 feet. In 1937 owner Martin Maurer decided to move the Big Duck four miles southeast to Flanders, where it occupied a prominent location as well. The new locale was near the duck barns and marshes of Maurer's new duck ranch. The entire area, including Flanders and Riverhead, was the center of Long Island's well-known duck farming industry. By 1939 there were about 90 duck farms in Suffolk County.^[2]

The Big Duck's unusual building and prime location helped garner it plenty of customer attention until it closed in 1984. Since 1988 The Big Duck has been located in Sears-Bellows Pond County Park, which is between Flanders and Hampton Bays on the eastern part of Long Island. The building houses a gift shop operated by the Friends for Long Island Heritage.^[2]

[edit] "Duck" as a technical term

Buildings such as this are classified as follies. However, in architecture the term "duck" is used more specifically to describe buildings that are in the shape of an everyday object they relate to. This term may originate from the Big Duck.^{[citation needed]}

The Big Duck itself was the target of widespread criticism during the 1960s and early 1970s but the building did have its architectural defenders. Robert Venturi said that since the building combined functional and symbolic aspects of architecture it was noteworthy. It was Venturi who coined the term "duck" to describe a building in which the architecture is subordinate to the overall symbolic form.^[2]

Edward Tufte's well-known book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information uses the term "duck", explicitly named after this building, to describe irrelevant decorative elements in charts.

[edit] External links

Roadside America

[edit] Notes

^ NRIS Database, National Register of Historic Places, retrieved Oct. 2006.
^ ^a ^b ^c Determining the Facts Reading 1: Representational Architecture, Roadside Attractions, National Park Service.

	U.S. National Register of Historic Places - (List of entries)
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