The book on buildings shaped like other things is Jim Heimann and
Rip Georges, CALIFORNIA CRAZY (SFran, [1971]).  Robt. Venturi
named the genre "duck buildings" after the LI example. Others
have called them mimetic or programmatic architecture. In our
new museum on the impact of the auto we have a major exhibit
on these buildings. (We call them giant object buildings to
avoid regional referents and highbrow prose.)  LA had about
80 of them at the peak of their popularity; most were built
between 1925 and 1950.  Care to guess how we conceived
that exhibit?
 
         Matt Roth