The building that was the head office of Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, always known by its trading name of White Star Line, has opened as a spa hotel.

Called 30 James Street, referring to the address of the building in Liverpool, England, which housed the White Star Line head office since the building was opened in 1896 till the demise of the company in 1934, has been converted to a 64 room spa hotel. A  Champagne bar with a 100 foot balcony has already opened its doors, while a restaurant is due to open in September. It will be called Carpathia Restaurant, in honour of the Cunard Line vessel that rescused 705 survivors of the Titanic disaster in the morning of 15 April 1912.

It is located across the street from the Pier Head, where many White Star Line ships sailed from and which today houses a temporary Liverpool Cruise Terminal building and the floating jetty itself. Cunard Building, also across the street from 30 James Street and headquarters of Cunard Line from 1917 to the late 1960s, will be converted permanent cruise terminal and it is due to open in 2015.

White Star Line was founded in 1869 in Liverpool and in 1902, it passed into the ownership of International Mechantile Marine, a conglomerate owned by the US banker John Piercepont Morgan.

After the First World War, it returned to British ownership and was effectively forced to merge with Cunard Line in 1934 as the depression had badly hurt the business of both companies and Cunard needed state funding to resume work on the first Queen Mary, which was completed in 1936.

The last White Star Line ocean liner in service was the 27,666 gross register ton motorship Britannic, which was built in 1930 and retired in 1960.