Name the liners with the ugliest interiors

German 4 stackers?

Well.....

Actually, I like them for the reason that so many others dislike them. I'm a big fan of the "disreputable" Victorian architects (John Kellum, Alfred Mullett) and their not particularly scholarly, but vigorous, brand of Victorianism. I am also a big fan of the move towards simplicity of design (about as far removed from Mullett as one can get....) and of the emerging Modernist movement. So, I enjoy the overblown interiors of the German ships a lot as a lover of Victorian excess. But....

What I LOATHE (except in the case of the Lusitania) are period revival rooms and the overwhelming pretention of the Beaux Arts era. To me, Newport ca 1900 represents the absolute bottom of the barrel, the nadir, the worst of the worst buildings ever erected in America. I enjoy a "pure Louis XIV style room" or a "pure Jacobean Staircase" in their proper settings, but they just set my teeth on edge when placed in a 20th century residence or ship. There was SO MUCH amazing stuff happening in the worlds of design ca 1900-1914, and none of it (with the possible exception of a few rooms aboard the George Washington) was reflected on a prewar transAtlantic liner. Just as good post modernism or minimalism is bypassed on today's cruise ships in favor of Vegas style kitsch or false art deco- the "period room" thing happening again.

In that regard, Aquitania represents, to me, the culmination of a very depressing design trend.
 
I've never been on any of these big ships, but it seems to me that their sheer size affects the design. With as many rooms as the QM2 has, the temptation is probably to try to be all things to all men. They try to have stuff that will appeal to Europeans, Americans, period freaks, art deco lovers, Elvis fans, minimalists etc. The result is bound to be a ghastly hodge-podge, with no coherent theme of peace and beauty - which is surely what they should be aiming for really. Or am I totally wrong, and they should be aiming for frenetic activity? Jim's 'birdie' room on the QM2 looks to me like the exhausted remnants of someone's tawdry imagination - "Oh God, not another room ....what on earth?" I do hope Jim and Mike will find it gone, but I wouldn't bet on it. I think the Lusy and the Mauretania were early attempts at market segmentation. The Maury for the Edwardian establishment, and the Lusy for younger people maybe? I would have liked the Lusitania, I think. It was light and airy.

At the time of the QM1's launch, she was considered very fashionable, from what I can tell. Those ghastly modern materials were considered wonderful. I can remember people thinking Formica was beautiful when I was a child - I can see the logic in hygienic ... but beautiful? In QM1's heyday, it was then the thing to have man-made materials. The colour schemes are best forgotten, I agree, but then some of ours recently have been fairly awful.

And, yes, anything the Windsors liked was probably best avoided.....

Anyway, when you next travel on QM2, Jim, I do hope the bread famine has been satisfactorily resolved. That really would have got me incandescent - so stupid and unnecessary ....
 
...and inside the toilet bowl as well. Really. The Zodiac Suite was certainly inexplicable, and I imagine that travelling in it must have been headache inducing to say the very least.
 
Another great Ugly Interior is the famous Ile de France first class cabin (publicity photo- Postwar) with the trellis patterned enamel walls and what appear to be asbestos coated
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structural beams on the unfinished ceiling.
 
The Italian Line deserves credit for going from over-the-top baroque to extremely well designed modern as quickly as they did. Had not the war invervened, there were plans afoot to remove the dated interiors of some of the older liners (I know that Roma was one of them) and replace them with minimalist modern rooms- definitely would have been an improvement. Rex was surprisingly restrained by Italia standards, and I always found her more dated than hideous- she was a 1911 dream ship making her debut two decades later, and can be seen as the last gasp of traditional classicism on the North Atlantic. Have you seen the Italia ship which had a "Long Gallery" apparently done by the same designers who did torture chamber sets for "B" films ca. 1935? Now THAT was hideous. Rex, come to think of it, reminded me internally of one of the Cunard or White Star intermediate vessels of the immediate pre-or-post WW1 years "supersized."

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Here is one of the lesser known Rex interiors- the Special Class Lounge, which became part of Cabin Class after the four class system was abandoned. Everything about it, from the quarter-sawn wood to the ornamental ironwork in the well sidelights, seemed aimed at the market segment who wished to pretend that the Jazz Age and WW1 had never happened. Not a bad looking room, but an anachronism on the world's most modern liner.
 
>>Have you seen the Italia ship which had a "Long Gallery" apparently done by the same designers who did torture chamber sets for "B" films ca. 1935?<<

Nope. I may have to do some poking around. Perhaps with one of Miller's photo books...unless you're...er..."fortunate" enough to have a photo or two. I still flinch at that Winter Garden from the QE2.

>>Now THAT was hideous.<<

THAT I can believe! Some of these liners would have needed only a rack, iron maiden and Tomas De Torquemada to complete the picture.
 
Yuck some of those interiors are hideous, that QE2 winter garden photo looks like an explosion in a flower shop. I don't rate the Ile De France dining room, reminds me of a sports hall. Of the modern cruise ships some of the Carnival monstrosities make my eyes seriously hurt, so garish!
 
Just about ALL modern cruise ships are ugly, both outside and in. They are nothing more than hulls built around a giant shopping mall with rooms on the outside forming one monstrous apartment complex.
 
That pretty much sums it up. Here in Florida there's a plethora of 3-day weekend deals to the Bahamas for dirt cheap on 3rd rate cruise ships, that are really nothing more than an excuse for many 18-35 year olds to go on drinking binges.
 
>3-day weekend deals to the Bahamas for dirt cheap on 3rd rate cruise ships, that are really nothing more than an excuse for many 18-35 year olds to go on drinking binges.

Well, hey, that's a tradition that dates back to at least the early 1930s.

Morro Castle and Oriente (Brand new in 1930) were known as "The Floating Whorehouses"in NYC because of the blind eye turned towards women who discreetly 'tricked' aboard in season. The drug and gambling 'concessions' on those ships were so lucrative that when William Warms abolished them crew members actually quit. I just bought a dossier from the FBI on that particular aspect of the grand days of Liner Travel.

Havana was known as a place where a young lady could lose her virginity to a decent looking guy who could be counted on not to 'talk,' and that aspect of the NYC/Cuba run was openly laughed at pre-war. Great first person quote about it in Burton's The Morro Castle. Twas also a place where one could get a three day abortion, and the staggered schedule of the Ward Line vessels (departed for New York on Monday and Thursday)assure that they turn up quite a bit in abortion testimonials.

The best quote I've found regarding the clientele who patronized the Cunard 'short cruises' in the early 1930s was given by the surgeon of the Franconia after a woman who felt he spurned her committed suicide: "It is not possible to become romantically involved with a woman whose stomach you had to pump upon first meeting.' (alcohol poisoning)

About the liners themselves~ it really wasn't until the 1970s that anything decent appeared on the short run voyages. Somewhere on ET there is a selection of color views taken aboard the Yarmouth Castle just before the fire~ I posted them years ago~ and as depressingly shabby as she was, she was one of the BETTER options.

>They are nothing more than hulls built around a giant shopping mall

Again, keeping alive a tradition dating back to at least 1929, and most egregiously practiced aboard l'Atlantique. Only thing is, now the rooms are actually comfortable and the majority of those who travel by ship enjoy it. Pre-1960s, the best you could say about ship travelers' experience is that they tolerated it.

Among Classic Era bon mots, who could forget:

~The White Star crew member with feces visibly on his hands dishing out food with the same.

~The 'musty' smell that permeated second class on a miserable Majectic crossing, late 1920s.

~The vibration on the Normandie which caused a passenger to write "It finally made me vomit. hate this ship."

~The 'dark and drafty' Leviathan.

~The cutlery on the Empress of Ireland which smelled of decaying food.

~The overweight, perpetually flatulent cabin mate; a stranger who ruined (in very readable manner)a late 1930s CGT crossing.

~The "Dull, dreary, stupid" experience of crossing first class aboard the Lusitania.

I could go on, but my point is that although people later recalled liner travel fondly(rose colored glasses, doddering old age and all); while it was the only way to cross, for every 'Ah...this is the life!' letter or diary one finds, one finds dozens of letters ranging from bemused to borderline insane that say, outright, that it WASN'T 'the life.'

The interiors today are just as tacky and second rate as the interiors of nearly everything built before 1950. With the exception of the brilliant period spanning 1950-1970, liner interiors have never represented smart, advanced, or sophisticated shoreside design. They were intended to be vulgar and, as such, the Carnival Ships are closer in spirit to the Ballin trio, (for instance) than they are to the brilliant postwar work from Italy, Holland, the U.S. and France.
 

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