Streamline Moderne

Streamline Moderne is a late form of Art Deco based on the shapes of streamlined vehicles. Buildings have rounded corners, flat roofs and long horizontal lines, often emphasized by parallel grooves or bands running around the facade. Walls are usually smooth stucco painted white or in pastel colors. Common details include round porthole windows, walls of glass block, chrome or steel railings and curved corner windows. Some buildings borrow forms from ocean liners, such as deck railings and a ship's bridge.

Robert V. Derrah's Coca-Cola Building in Los Angeles (1939) was built around four older buildings and made to look like an ocean liner, with portholes, a catwalk and a bridge. The Aquatic Park Bathhouse in San Francisco (1936), the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, England (1935), and the Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia Airport in New York (1939) are other examples. Compared with earlier Art Deco, Streamline Moderne stresses horizontal rather than vertical lines and replaces carved or cast ornament with plain curved surfaces.

Streamline Moderne developed from Art Deco in the early 1930s. Industrial designers including Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes gave locomotives, cars and household products smooth aerodynamic shapes, and architects applied the same forms to buildings. The style gained wider attention after the Century of Progress world's fair in Chicago in 1933-1934. During the Depression it replaced Art Deco's applied ornament with simple curves and smooth surfaces.

It was used widely for transportation buildings such as bus stations, train terminals and airport buildings, as well as diners, cinemas and apartment houses. In France it was called style paquebot, after ocean liners such as the SS Normandie. Miami Beach built many examples in the late 1930s, alongside its Art Deco hotels. The style fell out of use after the 1940s, though some buildings in it were still being built in the 1950s.