This structure inspired the word "duck" to be a common phrase in academic literature used to refer to buildings shaped like everyday objects or describe excessive ornamentation used in graphical presentations of data.

[1] Maurer hired local labor for the construction job; carpenter George Reeve, along with William and Samuel Collins, brothers who have been described as "eccentric stage show set designers".

[7] The Big Duck opened for business in June 1931[5] and was featured on the Atlas Cement Company's promotional calendar that year.

[5] The November 1932 issue of Popular Mechanics covered the building briefly, noting that it contained a salesroom and an office and sat on a foundation of concrete blocks.

[10] The building was originally constructed in 1931 on West Main Street (New York State Route 25) in the Upper Mills section of Riverhead.

[11] In 1937, Maurer had the building lifted from its foundation and relocated from its original Riverhead location to his new duck ranch in Flanders, four miles (6.4 km) away.

According to the Long Island newspaper Newsday, "The Big Duck has influenced the world of architecture; any building that is shaped like its product is called a 'duck'.

"[14] Edward Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information uses the term "duck", explicitly named after this building, to describe irrelevant decorative elements in information design:[15] When a graphic is taken over by decorative forms or computer debris, when the data measures and structures become Design Elements, when the overall design purveys Graphical Style rather than quantitative information, then the graphic may be called a duck in honor of the duck-form store, "Big Duck."