Grand Staircase of the Titanic

The "Main Staircase" is described as follows in the "Olympic" / & "Titanic" / Largest Steamers in the World (1911), White Star Line publicity brochure with coloured illustrations: We leave the deck and pass through one of the doors which admit us to the interior of the vessel, and, as if by magic, we at once lose feeling that we are on board a ship, and seem instead to be entering the hall of some great house on shore.

Dignified and simple oak panelling covers the walls, enriched in a few places by a bit of elaborate carved work, reminiscent of the days when Grinling Gibbons collaborated with his great contemporary, Wren.

In the middle of the hall rises a gracefully curving staircase, its balustrade supported by light scrollwork of iron with occasional touches of bronze, in the form of flowers and foliage.

It is modeled closely after the style so prevalent during the reign of William and Mary, except that instead of the usual heavily-carved balustrade, a light wrought-iron grille has been employed, a fashion found in a few of the most exclusive great houses of that period.

The Entrance Hall and Grand Staircase are surmounted by a glass dome of great splendor, a fitting crown as it were to these the largest and finest steamers in all the world.

[2]Sited in the forward part of the ship, the Grand Staircase was the main connection between decks for first-class passengers and the point of entry to numerous public rooms.

Off the A-Deck level a long aft companionway ran along the starboard side, connecting passengers to the reading and writing room and the lounge at the far end, which was entered via revolving doors.

They could also purchase small items like postcards, pay for tickets to the Turkish baths and squash court, reserve deck chairs, check out board games, and request their seating in the dining saloon, among other services.

[5] The two-storey-high A-Deck level featured a large wrought iron and glass dome overhead that allowed natural light to enter the stairwell during the day.

The small beaded crystal chandelier fixtures identified on the wreck only hung in the forward parts of the A and Boat Deck levels, the rest contained cut-glass shades.

Each staircase was built of solid irish oak, with each banister containing elaborate wrought iron grilles with ormolu swags in the Louis XIV style.

Honour and Glory crowning Time was the name given to the allegorical wall clock in the Neoclassical eclectic style located above the first central landing (from the top) of the Grand Staircase, just below the wrought iron and glass dome.

Like the Olympic, Titanic was equipped with a large number of clocks supplied by the Magneta Company of Zurich (Switzerland), that were distributed throughout the transatlantic in passenger and crew spaces.

[6] The ornamented oak panel comprised a half-point arch supported by two pilasters in composite order, each capital decorated with a winged putti's head in its centre.

In the central panel, the round case of the clock itself rested upon an estipite adorned with laurel festoons, this was flanked by two winged female figures in mid-relief dressed with a chiton.

Surrounding the figural central panel there were different decorative motifs such as swags of fruits and flowers, egg-and-dart, scrolls, acanthus, rosettes, a pair of seated griffins, etc.

The main source of inspiration for Olympic's only architectural clock was a monumental chimney designed by Percier and Fontaine for Napoleon Bonaparte, which included a decorative timepiece.

Among the several differences between Percier and Fontaine's original design and Olympic reinterpretation is that in the latter the two female figures were completely dressed, as opposed to the French ones, whose bodies' upper halves are shown almost entirely nude.

Likewise, many Greco-Roman military, warfare and victory symbology used in the original version to glorify Napoleon as the new "Roman" emperor, was not depicted in the British twin clocks.

A reception area for patrons of the À La Carte Restaurant and Café Parisien, which existed on both Olympic and Titanic, was decorated in white-painted Georgian paneling occupied the whole of the B-Deck foyer off the aft staircase.

[12][better source needed] These pieces retained the avocado green colour they had been painted in the 1932 refit, and included large amounts of wall paneling, carved newel posts, window frames, cornice-work, and doors.

Wreckage from the Titanic's aft and forward Grand Staircases, recovered in the weeks after the sinking, can be seen at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

[18] Ken Marschall attested to spotting at least 9 pieces of the wrought iron and gilt balustrades from the staircases in the debris field from the 1986 Woods Hole expedition, though no photographs have ever been taken.