The Titanic’s grade II-listed London ticket office has been turned into £5m luxury apartments
Got £5m burning a hole in your pocket and an interest in gruesome maritime history?
This might be for you: a developer has just unveiled a block of luxury flats in the building where the Titanic's ticket office was located.
Grade II-listed Oceanic House, in Trafalgar Square, has been redeveloped into six luxury apartments, including one two-storey penthouse.
The homes, which vary between 1,679 sq ft and 5,447 sq ft, are all bespoke – but with price tags of between £5m and £25m, owning a slice of maritime history will cost you.
The building was designed by architect Henry Tanner to act as a London headquarters for the White Star Line, the company behind the ill-fated Titanic, and completed in 1907.
The ground floor of the building served as the line's booking office for wealthy passengers, with luggage rooms in the basement.
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It was in the boardroom at Oceanic House chairman Bruce Ismay boasted the Titanic was "unsinkable" – and added that the Titanic might arrive in New York ahead of schedule, on the evening of 16 April, rather than early on 17 April.
After the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on 14 April, a photographer took an iconic picture of 16-year-old Ned Parfett holding an Evening News poster proclaiming: "Titanic disaster, great loss of life".
Since then, Oceanic House has acted as the London offices of Barclays Bank, offices for the Ministry of Defence – and a restaurant called Texas Embassy.
Think the apartments are a little pricey? It could pay to wait a while – figures published by Stirling Ackroyd last week suggested house prices at the top end of the London market fell 5.4 per cent between the second quarter of 2016 and the same period the year before.
On the other hand, property portal Zoopla has said the number of Americans searching for homes in London has spiked since Donald Trump's victory in the Presidential election. So perhaps it might be worth snapping them up after all…