THE BIG DUCK

Maybe, like us, you’ve seen one of these buildings on an old postcard and asked yourself, “What do they sell in that place?” Answer: exactly what it looks like.

Bondurant’s Pharmacy (Lexington, Kentucky)

Shaped like a giant mortar and pestle, like the kind that compound pharmacies once used. (The mortar is the building; the pestle is a sign with an “RX” on top.) From 1974 to 2011, it was a drugstore. Now it’s a liquor store.

Torre Telefónica (Santiago, Chile)

With the arrival of thin, rectangular smartphones, this telecom company’s HQ building looks a little outdated. But when the 470-foot building went up in 1993, it looked just like the cell phones of the era. A portion of windows form a “screen,” while part of the tower’s side juts out like a small antenna.

Giant Artichoke (Castroville, California)

A must-see in the town that holds an annual Artichoke Festival is this massive 20-foot-tall artichoke, which houses an artichoke-themed restaurant called the Giant Artichoke.

National Fisheries Development Board Building (Hyderabad, India)

This council deals with fish and fishing issues, and it does that from inside of a five-story blue fish. (The fish’s gills are actually windows.)

Eli’s Florida Orange World (Kissimmee, Florida)

This 60-foot-tall half-orange sells grapefruit, tangerines…and oranges.

Pysanka Museum (Kolomyia, Ukraine)

A pysanka is an elaborately painted and decorated Ukrainian Easter egg. This museum, which is oblong like an egg and painted like a pysanka, houses one of the world’s finest collections of that very thing.

Coney Island Hot Dog Stand (Bailey, Colorado)

You cannot eat this giant hot dog made of concrete and metal. You can eat the Coney Island–style hot dogs sold inside.

The Big Duck (Flanders, New York)

Built by a duck farmer in 1931 as a place to sell ducks and duck eggs. The duck-shaped building now sells duck-themed souvenirs.

The Doughnut Hole (La Puente, California)

Technically, the building looks like a doughnut, not a doughnut hole. But it’s a drive-through doughnut shop, and the part that customers drive through is the doughnut hole, hence the name. (The doughnut portion of the building is where the employees make the doughnuts.)

The Longaberger Company Building (Newark, Ohio)

Longaberger made and sold handcrafted maple wood picnic baskets, and the company was headquartered in a 180,000-square-foot building shaped like a picnic basket. (The company went out of business in 2018 and the building is now vacant.)

First person in history to get a driver’s license: Karl Benz, inventor of the first practical motor car (1888).