Berlin Old Ostbahnhof

Berlin Ostbahnhof (Küstriner Bahnhof)
The former station building in 1928
Location	Küstriner Platz Friedrichshain, Berlin Germany
Construction
Architect	Adolf Lohse
History
Opened	1 October 1867
Closed	1882

The old Berlin Ostbahnhof, sometimes also named Küstriner Bahnhof, was a short-lived passenger railway terminus in Berlin, Germany, opened in 1867 as the terminus of the Prussian Eastern Railway (Ostbahn) to Königsberg (now Kaliningrad),.

The building was located on Küstriner Platz (today Franz-Mehring-Platz) in the present-day Friedrichshain quarter, slightly north of the current Ostbahnhof and the former Wriezener Bahnhof. The station concourse was projected by the architect Adolf Lohse and completed by Hermann Cuno. As a passenger station it worked until 1882 when the Stadtbahn line was opened and the Ostbahn traffic moved to the Schlesischer Bahnhof. Some years after the closure the Old Ostbahnhof was used as a shelter of the Red Cross.

On 1 February 1929 the building was converted to a music hall, named Varieté Plaza, then one of the largest in Berlin providing seating for up to 3,000 spectators. "Aryanized" after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, it was used from 1938 by the state leisure organization Kraft durch Freude. The station building was finally destroyed by strategic bombing during the Second World War. Some years later, its remains were removed to erect the office building of the newspaper Neues Deutschland on the ground of the former railway terminus. A former cogeneration plant in the rear today is home of the Berghain nightclub.