Hochbahn-Bogen
Elevated Railway Arch
The Viaduct on Schönhauser Allee which was also called the "Umbrella of the City Council" ("Magistratsschirm") was built in 1910 and became an elevated track mainly because an underground construction appeared as too costly.
The rich citizens of Charlottenburg could not be expected to look at an elevated electric railway and that is the reason why when the first route for the public city transport was built in 1896 starting from the Warschauer Bridge the stretch between Nollendorfplatz and Knieplatz (today Ernst-Reuter-Platz) was placed underground. Thus Berlin became the fifth European city after London (1890), Budapest (1896), Glasgow (1897) and Paris (1900) to have an underground railway. In 1903 already 30 million passengers were transported. The elevated stretch between the Nordring station (today Schönhauser Allee) and Alexander Platz was opened in 1913. In 1930 the line was extended by one station to reach Pankow (Vinetastrasse), and in the same year the widely-known sausage-stand "Konnopke" opened under the station Danziger Strasse (today’s Eberswalder Strasse). The viaduct on Schönhauser Allee with the two elevated stations (architects: Alfred Grenader and Johann Bousset) is 1.7 kilometers long and is a protected monument.