The SS United States, celebrated in the 1950s for its speed and chic décor, is due to be sunk off the coast of Florida to create an artificial reef. In the February/March 2020 issue of our newsletter, The Registry, we wrote about how the ship’s interior decorators, Dorothy Marckwald and Anne Urquhart of Smyth, Urquhart, and Marckwald, Inc., tackled the job. This article is adapted from the newsletter.
by Mary Goljenboom
The SS United States was proudly saluted as a product of American ingenuity even before its maiden voyage. The liner was designed to carry two thousand passengers in luxury between New York City and Europe. It was also designed to be converted within days into a transport for thirteen thousand US troops.
Choosing the furniture, linens, and decorations that fulfilled the ship’s dual roles was an enormous challenge. Interior decorators Dorothy Marckwald and Anne Urquhart applied their own ingenuity to create the required elegance and comfort that could be stripped down to basics within four days.
Outfitting a passenger liner is more complicated than decorating the equivalent hotel on land. The geometry is different. A hotel room’s walls and floors are perpendicular and flat, allowing, for example, furniture to be set flush against a wall. A liner’s decks are gently curved to increase the ship’s buoyancy and to allow water to easily drain. Some of its walls (or bulkheads) are concave or convex. Therefore, furniture and furnishings are custom-made to fit a room’s angles and curves. The pieces also have to be made of materials durable enough to withstand the salty air and being tossed around in rough seas. Marckwald and Urquhart, veterans of some twenty-five liners before getting the United States contract in 1949, understood this well.
Other factors added more complexity to the SS United States job.Speed and safety from fire were the top priorities of the builders and owners. Consequently, Marckwald and Urquhart had to make everything—furniture, fabrics, paint, art objects—lightweight and fireproof. Many materials, particularly wood, were prohibited. It was up to the decorators to find other materials to create the rich décor they envisioned. But that décor could not be too rich and luxurious because the ship was partially financed with taxpayer money.
Given those requirements, Marckwald and Urquhart chose an understated, sleek, uncluttered look (now called Mid-Century modern) whose richness came from expertly mixing colors, textures, and lighting. Their goal was to create an environment that was elegant, functional, cheerful, harmonious, and tranquil.
The decorators and their staff worked out twelve basic color schemes applying one to each of the ship’s 695 passenger staterooms, the public lounges, dining rooms, theaters, library, ballroom, gym and swimming pool, decks and children’s play areas. Each scheme defined all the colors and shades used in the room’s furnishings, from the paint on the wall to upholstery, draperies, and carpet or flooring. Blues and greens were the predominant colors but by no means the only ones. On the walls alone, they used ninety-nine shades of paint.
Meeting the fireproof requirement was their biggest difficulty. Wool and leather were good choices because they are difficult to ignite. Flammable fabrics like cotton were acceptable as long as they held their color and texture when treated to make them fireproof. For other options, the decorators investigated new materials and technologies and sometimes put existing products to new uses.
They chose aluminum, already the ship’s main construction material, to replace the wood in furniture, covering some of the chair legs and lamp bases with leather to soften the look. They replaced the solid aluminum tops of many tables, desks, and dressers with a new composite material created by Westinghouse Electric Corp. (who also made the ship’s turbines). It sandwiched aluminum between two layers of fireproof melamine plastic and could be manufactured in a wide variety of colors and finishes. Marckwald and Urquhart used fourteen colors in both glossy and satin finishes.
Unable to use foam rubber or animal hair to stuff the cushions of sofas and chairs, they switched to a new material based on glass that was resilient and comfortable. Another new material, Dynel, a man-made fiber recently introduced by Union Carbide, was an important discovery. It was fireproof, took color well, and could be woven with other threads, like wool and silk. The twenty-one hundred bedspreads ordered for staterooms and their matching draperies were made from twenty-seven different Dynel-based fabrics.
By blending fibers and mixing colors into specially woven fabrics, the decorators created the visual and tactile aesthetic that they desired. For instance, they mixed six shades of raw silk, cotton, chenille, and wool with gold, silver, blue, green, and copper metallic threads in the drapery fabric for the observation lounge.
The weight and fireproof rules also applied to the decorative arts commissioned for the ship. Sculptors worked in foam-glass (an insulating material) and extruded aluminum. Muralists used enamel, gesso, copper, and aluminum. Glass artists etched with sand and accented pieces with gold and silver leaf.
For more than two years the team made plans, wrote specifications and budgets, hired contractors from across the country, approved outputs, and managed thousands of details. They ordered twenty miles of fabric to be sewn into draperies, seat covers, table linens, and bedspreads and had twenty-two thousand pieces of furniture made. By the spring of 1952, railroad freight cars full of furniture, furnishings, and equipment arrived daily at the Newport News, Virginia shipyard to be installed and placed.
On July 3, 1952, when the SS United States left New York on its maiden voyage, Dorothy Marckwald and Anne Urquhart were onboard, like the other passengers, ready to enjoy the ship’s cheerful, harmonious, and tranquil environment.
For more information and color photos of the SS United States see:
LIFE Magazine (in Google Books), July 21, 1952
SS United States Conservancy, a non-profit seeking to save and repurpose the ship (which is currently docked in Philadelphia)
Author Lawrence M. Driscoll’s website on the SS United States and its sister, SS America
Sources
newspapers accessed via Newspapers.com
Richmond (VA) Times Dispatch
17 June 1951
11 May 1952
18 July 1952
28 July 1952
Newport News Daily Press
9 May 1951
30 March 1952
6 April 1952
Staunton (VA) News Leader, 17 July 1952
Arizona Republic (Phoenix, AZ), 11 May 1952; 10 August 1952
Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, MA), 19 May 1952
New York Times, 30 March 1952; 244 June 1952
Pittsburgh Press, 22 July 1952
Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, 27 July 1952
Valley Times (North Hollywood, CA), 10 March 1952
Lawrence M. Driscoll’s website The United States Lines and the Heydays of Trans-Atlantic Travel
Library of Congress, Historic American Engineering Record, HAER PA-647, SS United States
Steven Ujifusa, A Man and His Ship
Frank Braynard, The Big Ship
Gordon R. Ghareeb, A Woman’s Touch: The Seagoing Interiors of Dorothy Marckwald
Photos of the rooms Marckwald and Urquhart created for the SS United States are in the Gottscho-Schleisner Collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. https://www.loc.gov/photos/?fa=subject:ships%7Ccontributor:smyth,+urquhart+%26+marckwald&q=gottscho-schleisner+collection&st=gallery
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