The Duck Shop Shaped Like a Duck
A Long Island farmer built a giant duck to sell ducks and eggs. Architects later borrowed its name for an entire kind of building.
Customers at Martin and Jeule Maurer’s roadside shop could see what was for sale before they read a sign. The shop was a white duck, about twenty feet tall, with a doorway in its body and a beak pointing toward the road.
Building the Shop
The Maurers raised ducks on Long Island. After seeing a coffee shop shaped like a coffee pot in California, they commissioned a version suited to their own business. The Big Duck was built in Riverhead in 1931.
Carpenter George Reeve and theatrical set builders William and Samuel Collins helped turn the idea into a building. Its rounded body was formed with a wooden framework, wire mesh, and cement. The structure was about thirty feet long, with a small salesroom inside.
The eyes were made from Ford Model T taillights. This was a practical roadside advertisement with details borrowed from other trades: carpentry supplied the frame, theatrical construction supplied the sculptural form, and automobile parts supplied the red eyes.
Moving the Duck
The duck moved from Riverhead to Flanders during its working life. When development later threatened it, Suffolk County took ownership and moved it to a park in 1987. In 2007, it returned to Flanders, where it stands beside Route 24.
An Architectural “Duck”
The building also acquired an audience well beyond people buying poultry. Architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown used the term “duck” for a building whose overall form expresses its purpose. A conventional shop might advertise with a sign attached to its front. Here, the building itself supplied the image.
The term entered architectural discussion through work including the 1972 book Learning from Las Vegas, written by Venturi, Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour.
The Big Duck survives at Big Duck Ranch, on land associated with the region’s duck-farming history. It is no longer selling the Maurers’ ducks and eggs. The cement body, projecting beak, and little entrance preserve the shape customers once approached to make their purchases.
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Sources & photograph
Adapted from the Hidden Here story catalog. Explore the historical records behind this story.
