Big Duck - History

History

Owner Martin Maurer had The Big Duck building 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 builders Smith and Yeager completed the concrete finish work on the Big Duck which was featured in Atlas Cement's 1931 calendar. Merlin Yeager noted that most of the duck is actually finished with Portland Cement, but they ran out and finished with Atlas Cement. The Big Duck was also featured in Popular Mechanics magazine.

In 1937, Martin Maurer moved the building four miles (6 km) southeast to Flanders, where it occupied a prominent location 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.

The Big Duck's unusual building and prime location helped garner much customer attention until it closed in 1984. In 1988, Suffolk County acquired The Big Duck and moved it to Route 24 on the edge of Sears-Bellows Pond County Park 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. The duck was returned to its Flanders location on October 6, 2007. Suffolk County continues to own it, maintains its interior and pays for staffing; Southampton Town maintains the exterior. The original 27-acre (110,000 m2) duck farm was purchased by the town in 2006.

The Big Duck has been used as a setting in a sketch from Between the Lions (which currently airs on PBS Kids) called, Moby Duck, parody of Moby Dick. In this sketch, the duck was named Moby.