“Where the architectural systems of space, structure, and program are submerged and distorted by an overall symbolic form,” wrote Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown in 1968, “[we call] this kind of building-becoming-sculpture the duck, in honour of the duck-shaped drive-in, ‘The Long Island Duckling.’” Since then, it has become the catch-all term for buildings that revel in their didactic form.
Originally built in 1931 by duck farmer Martin Maurer, the building was used as a shop to sell the farm’s produce, an eye-catching advertisement on the busy Main Street of Riverhead, Long Island. Maurer had been inspired by a roadside shop shaped like a giant coffeepot, which he spotted while holidaying in California, and decided to import some of this west-coast bombast to liven up his rural outpost.
He hired a local carpenter, George Reeve, who in turn hired two set designers to build the Duck, using a timber frame covered with wire mesh and concrete – with a cooked chicken carcass and a live duck tied to a perch acting as models. The finished building was six metres tall and ten metres long, and weighed 7,500 kg, with a final theatrical touch brought with the eyes: made from Model T Ford tail lights, they would glow red at night when cars passed by.
It was an instant icon, featured in “Popular Mechanics” magazine and the Atlas Cement Co calendar, which declared it “The Most Spectacular Piece of Cement Work in 1931.”
