The American Guide Series, produced by the Federal Writers’ Project, is one of the most well-known WPA projects. Written as a collection of travel guides, the series included suggested tour routes as well as essays on the history and culture of each U.S. state and territory. Major U.S. cities and several regions were also given their own separate guidebooks.
The state guides give a fascinating snapshot of American life in the 1930s. Written in a lively and approachable style, they detail and celebrate the rich diversity that our country displayed at that time. The writers’ enthusiasm is infectious and their guide is as much fun to read today as it must have been for travelers in the 1930s.
Several historians have written about the American Guide Series over the past 80 years, but no one, to my knowledge, has used them as current-day travel guides. That is just what I set out to do. I am an American historian, art photographer, and enthusiastic traveler. I have read each of these guides. I love them for their wonderful enthusiasm and their curiosity about every aspect of regional life—from food, to linguistics, to folklore, to statistics, to geography, to environment, to history—and especially for their liberal attitudes and respect for diversity. In this series, I will be posting photo essays and articles based upon tours recommended in the guides.
Fern L. Nesson
When the New York Guide was written, Suffolk County on Long Island was an agricultural paradise. Acres of potato fields, fruit tree farms, wheat fields and vegetable gardens stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to Long Island Sound. Among these fields were at least 90 duck farms. The breed of duck — Pekin — was so tasty that it known ever after as Long Island duck and has always been considered the best duck one could eat.
The Guide describes the scene in Suffolk County:
At EASTPORT , 72 . 8 m . ( 964 pop . ) , the Long Island duckling whitens the shores and waters of inlets . From an obscure beginning, the industry has grown in recent years to a $ 3,000,000 business, which gives employment to many during the summer months . Bordering the highway in this section are several large duck farms, each with an annual production of from 40,000 to 200,000 of the snow-white birds.
Inexplicably, the writers seem to have missed the Big Duck! Located in Flanders, the Big Duck was the brain-child of Martin Maurer, a local duck farmer. He enlisted the aid of two theatre set designers, William and Samuel Collins. They tied a live duck with a string to their porch to serve as a model. George Reeve, a local carpenter built the duck’s wooden frame copying the carcass of a cooked chicken. He then covered the frame wire mesh and molded concrete.
The Big Duck is huge: 18 feet wide, 30 feet long, 20 feet tall with eyes made from Ford Model-T tail-lights that glow in the dark. Until 1987, Mauruer sold (delicious) rotisserie ducks from the building. Surrounded by Suffolk County’s duck farms, it was both the epicenter and the classic symbol of Long Island’s duck-farming industry.
Quite soon after its construction, its fame spread world-wide. In November, 1932, Popular Mechanics magazine featured the Big Duck on its cover, and, in the 1960s the architect, Robert Venturi, named a whole category of roadside architecture –“Duck Architecture” — after The Big Duck. Its photo graces the cover of his book, Leaving Las Vegas, which includes within it it other prominent examples like the Giant Hot Dog in Coney Island, an immense Pineapple fruit stand in Australia and, surprisingly, Chartres Cathedral in France. According to Venturi, duck buildings express their function — often boldly. [They are] special buildings that [are] symbols as well.”
Sadly, there are no more duck farms in Suffolk County, Long Island. The relative proximity of the county’s beautiful beaches to New York City transformed the eastern part of the county into “The Hamptons.” Wealthy summer home owners don’t tolerate the odors, feathers and general muck of duck farms, and so the duck farms had to go.
Along with the surrounding duck farms, the Big Duck closed in the early 1980s. Thankfully, its owners donated it to Suffolk County in 1987. Since that time , the County has preserved it and it is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Although the Guide never mentions the Big Duck, it is not to be missed. Back in the day, I used to love it for both its rotisserie ducks and its pop architecture. Now it functions only as a gift shop. But the architecture alone suffices. Go and see it; its a beauty!
