Oceanic House is a grade II listed former office building at 1 Cockspur Street, in the City of Westminster, London. It was designed by Henry Tanner junior [1] and was completed in 1907. It was originally the London headquarters of the White Star Line from which tickets for the RMS Titanic were sold. It later became a Barclays Bank, was used by the British Ministry of Defence, and became the Texas Embassy Cantina restaurant which closed in 2012. In 2016 it was converted into six luxury apartments and a duplex penthouse. It is owned by the Crown Estate. [2]
Cockspur Street is a short street in the City of Westminster, London, SW1 which with a very short part of Trafalgar Square links Charing Cross – a small roundabout – to Pall Mall/Pall Mall East at the point where that road changes name, opposite the traffic exit from Haymarket. It and all the streets mentioned are part of the A4, a road running west from the City of London, and it is a minimum of three lanes wide and is two lanes one-way, one lane buses only. It has existed since at least the 16th century along a similar line.
The City of Westminster is an Inner London borough that also holds city status. It occupies much of the central area of Greater London including most of the West End. Historically in Middlesex, it is to the west of the ancient City of London, directly to the east of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and its southern boundary is the River Thames. The London borough was created with the 1965 establishment of Greater London. Upon its creation, it inherited the city status previously held by the smaller Metropolitan Borough of Westminster from 1900, which was first awarded to Westminster in 1540.
The Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, more commonly known as the White Star Line, was a British shipping company. Founded out of the remains of a defunct packet company, it gradually rose up as one of the most prominent shipping lines in the world, providing passenger and cargo services between the British Empire and the United States. While many other shipping lines focused primarily on speed, White Star branded their services by focusing more on providing steady and comfortable passages, for both upper class travelers and immigrants. Today it is most famous for the innovative vessel Oceanic of 1870, and for the losses of some of their best passenger liners, including the wrecking of RMS Atlantic at Halifax in 1873, the sinking of RMS Republic off Nantucket in 1909, the infamous loss of RMS Titanic in 1912 and that of HMHS Britannic while serving as a hospital ship in 1916. Despite its casualties, the company retained a prominent hold on shipping markets around the globe before falling into decline during the Great Depression, which ultimately led to a merger with its chief rival, Cunard Line, which operated as Cunard-White Star Line until 1950. Cunard Line then operated as a separate entity until 2005 and is now part of Carnival Corporation & plc. As a lasting reminder of the White Star Line, modern Cunard ships use the term White Star Service to describe the level of customer care expected of the company.
