Pagan-Fletcher Restoration

 In June 1834, the Pagan family, which included Robert, his wife Ellen, and their four young children, immigrated from Scotland. Pagan purchased 78 acres in Valley Stream. Pagan took up farming and grew rye, buckwheat, oats, corn, and potatoes.

In the early 1850s, Pagan opened a general store on his property. Also around that time, Ellen, a devout evangelical with Methodist leanings, opened her home to fellow worshippers, and conducted religious services. From the late 1850s through the 1870s, Pagan’s son-in-law, William Fletcher, married to Pagan's daughter Catherine, bought land that once belonged to Pagan. The final family to live in the homestead were the Fairchilds; related to the Pagans through marriage. The Fairchild family, fourth generation Americans, owned Fairchild Publications, the publishers of "Women’s Wear Daily.” 

In 1942, the Louis Fairchild family left, and another brother, Emil (not married to a Boyd sister) moved in full-time. Emil, Martha, and their three grown children: Donald, Gordon, and Jane, all lived in the house. Donald, the eldest, crayoned murals on the third floor landing, hall, and bathroom. 

In 1948, a year after Emil’s passing, the house, and remaining 10 acres were sold to the Lynwood Housing Corp. Between 1949 and 1950, Lynwood built Lynwood Gardens, a mid-century community of 49 homes. Lynwood used the old Fletcher estate for storage and office space. During Lynwood’s occupancy, many of the original features of the home were stripped, damaged or destroyed. 

In 1977, the Village of Valley Stream, under the leadership of Mayor Dominick Minerva, authorized the purchase of the home, which had foreclosed, for $40,000; rescuing it from demolition. In 1983, the Fletcher estate was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. From 1988 to 1992, the building was renovated and restored.  The Pagan-Fletcher Restoration is operated by the Valley Stream historical society and maintained by the Village of Valley Stream.

Source:

“Pagan-Fletcher Restoration & Tours.” Village of Valley Stream, www.vsvny.org/index.asp?SEC=17E2184D-D1F2-402C-8953-35B0520559EA&DE=7B89F47B-4238-4245-BF3D-EC35458038CC. Accessed 28 May 2024. 

Big Duck

In 1931, Riverhead duck farmer Martin Maurer commissioned some local builders to create this 10-ton eye-catcher using concrete (technically, "ferrocement") applied over a wooden frame. Taillights from a Model T Ford became its eyes, glowing red at night. Maurer sold ducks and eggs from the shop in its belly.  The builders Smith and Yeager completed the concrete finish work on the Big Duck which was featured in Atlas Cement's 1931 calendar. In 1937, Martin Maurer moved the building to Flanders, where it occupied a prominent location near the duck barns and marshes of Maurer's new duck ranch.

Maurer patented his fowl creation, and the Duck became the darling of vacationing New Yorkers -- particularly husband and wife architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, who invented the term "duck architecture" in their 1972 book, Learning From Las Vegas. This explain why, in the world of architecture, any building shaped like its product is called a "duck." 

The Big Duck -- 30 feet long, 20 feet high, and 18 feet wide -- has shifted locale a few times. In the 1980s, when the land on which the Duck sat was earmarked for development, giant duck preservationists and the Friends for Long Island's Heritage campaigned to save it. The Duck was donated to the county. On January 27, 1988, it was moved from Flanders to Hampton Bay along Route 24, to the entrance of Sears-Bellow County Park. However, by 2007 it was clear that the original land would not be developed, so the Big Duck was moved back to its Flanders spot.

The shop still operates -- now as a tourism center for the East end of Long Island, selling duck souvenirs to flocks of city weekend-trippers. The interior of the Duck offers a small display of Duck artifacts, photos, and news clippings, and if you time your visit just right you'll find a volunteer manning an exhibit in an adjacent barn about duck farming.  It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.

Sources:

“Big Duck.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 29 Mar. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Duck

“The Big Duck, Flanders, New York.” RoadsideAmerica.Com, www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2173. Accessed 16 May 2024