May I say something a little rude ? I am not happy of the treatment author De Narbonne decided to give to his piece. Some of the designs aren't "excentricities" at all (for example, the Dassault VG executive, back in the '60-early '70s EVERYTHING was expected to go VG), and some are totally out of center (pun intended): the way the NYT drafter treated the leading edge of the Seversky super-clipper's wing doesn't elicit him to decry the design itself. Not to mention the Bleriot's early transoceanic transport with a boat-like fuselage: up to the early '40s there was real concern in providing the planes traveling on the sea a boat-like underbody to allow them to go down safely in an emergency (Piaggio's airliners, for example). And, finally, from a purely aerodynamic and structural point of view, the Bel Geddes project (in spite of its magnificiency) is less "flyable" than the majority of the supposed "excentricies".
In spite of this, a real great issue.