Model and “Titanic” superfan Sarah Boll sunk her Manhattan apartment this summer … but her heart will go on.
Where there was once an unassuming white box of a two-bedroom unit, Boll has fastened portholes and gold decals to the walls of the living room after the infamous ship’s Verandah Cafe. She’s outfitted her main bedroom with gilded panels, and put up the names of the 1912 disaster’s victims in one of her bathrooms, which is now so full of sparkling blue fabric and newspaper clippings that it’s only for show. Her second bedroom has become the Water Room, a suspended shipwreck diorama of sorts — and is also unusable for its usual purpose.
“I would just buy tons of different shades of blue fabric and sometimes white, if it was this reflective kind, and then I would just experiment with that,” Boll said of her online shopping for decorating her Chinatown home. “So I have an insane amount of blue fabric.”
Boll started posting TikToks of her apartment in mid-April, but it wasn’t until this summer that they consistently went viral, racking up millions of cumulative views. She said she assembled the decorations almost entirely herself — a friend wrote the names of the victims.
“I would buy a ticket to tour this apartment just for funsies,” one commenter wrote last month.
“Telling my children this was Rose,” another quipped last week on a video where Boll shows off a dress and some iceberg-like earrings.
One of Boll’s rooms is decorated with news clips of the 1912 Titanic sinking.
Sarah Boll
Boll began her journey of transforming an entire New York City rental unit into an homage to the Titanic and James Cameron’s 1997 film when she had a smaller place in the Financial District a few years ago. That apartment was big enough to hold her father’s high-school graduation present to her: a model of the Titanic she says was “like the size of my leg.” Her mom sent it to her, “and then I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to have a Titanic party.’”
This required a few thematic purchases, “but it was nowhere near what I’ve done to this place,” Boll said on the phone from within her nautical den last week.
At one point, Boll installed an iceberg made of white fabric in her current home. But she said she eventually gave the item away to someone who messaged her about it on TikTok.
“She came over, [and] I was like, ‘Here’s a bunch of fabric,’” the model said.
Boll draped blue fabric all over her apartment.
Sarah Boll
In discussing her DIY decorations, Boll emphasized how renter-friendly the whole setup has been. “The only holes I made in the wall were for the portholes,” she said. “Everything’s taped,” which means on humid days she has “to start tacking it, ‘cause everything falls down.”
Boll said she’s unsure exactly how much money she’s spent on the watery design, but estimated the total in the thousands of dollars. One cherub figure alone cost $900, she said.
“If I was the type of person to pay attention to how much money I’m spending, I would’ve never started doing this in the first place,” she added.
Portholes and other ship fixtures are hung up throughout Boll’s apartment.
Sarah Boll
While Boll’s TikTok bio states her “Titanic is still afloat,” it won’t be for long. She finally hosted a Titanic-themed party this month after canceling numerous times as she perfected her project, and now she’s ready to move onto her next themed renovation: “The Wizard of Oz.”
“I’ve already started buying stuff,” Boll said.