Antonplatz

The expansion of Berliner Allee began in 1804. Antonplatz was created in 1871 and officially recognized as a public square in 1875. The tram line on Berliner Allee is today the oldest route fully intact and still used in Berlin. There was already horse-drawn carriage service in 1877, the precursor to the tram, from Alexanderplatz all the way to Weissen See. The name, Antonplatz, dates back prior to 1875. It was named after Anton Matthias Schön (1837-after 1913), a large land owner and Prussian local politician. He was the Berlin representative and younger brother of the Hamburg shipping and real estate tycoon Gustav Adolf Schön (1834-1889), who acquired large tracts of land in Weissensee in 1872, which he parceled and sold off at a profit by 1874. The community of Weissensee, which was not yet part of Berlin, acquired Antonplatz in 1875. Hotels, banks and a department store sprang up. In 1897 a Kaiser Wilhelm monument was created on Antonplatz to mark the 100th birthday of Wilhelm I (Germany's Kaiser from 1871 to 1888). That's why city maps from the period around 1900 also included the unofficial title for Antonplatz, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Platz. The memorial statue was moved in 1928 and melted down in the Second World War. The current appearance of Antonplatz dates back to 2001.
From 1907 until well into the 1920s, ,Berliner Allee was a cinema mile. The first cinemas, or "Kintopps“, as they were referred to by natives of Berlin, were called "cinemagraphic theaters" or Lichtspiele. Often they were staged in converted shops. The Lichtspieltheater on the heavily frequented Antonplatz was the first new free-standing cinema in Weissensee. It was erected in 1919 according to designs by Berliner cinema architects Max Bischoff and Fritz Wilms. It was badly damaged in the Second World War and reopened in 1948. In 1979, the building authorities closed what at the time was the only private cinema in East Berlin. The private operator gave up the business, and the city administration of East Berlin (Magistrate) took over the cinema. Following substantial reconstruction, the KINO TONI was reopened in 1982. Today it is once again in private ownership.