Old waiting room

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Old waiting room, 2015 as "waiting room at the cathedral"

Alter Wartesaal is the name of an event center in Cologne with a capacity for 1,000 guests, consisting of a restaurant, bar and disco. It is a structural part of today's Cologne Central Station .

Building history

On December 5, 1859, the Cölner Centralbahnhof was opened, the predecessor of today's Cologne Central Station. Its platform hall was laid out at ground level. On January 9, 1883, the City Council of Cologne decided not to build the new train station elsewhere, but to raise the tracks in the city and run them through the city on dams or brick viaducts . The higher level of the track made it possible for the first and second class waiting rooms to be built underneath the tracks between Trankgasse and Johannisstraße. On May 25, 1894, the three-part platform hall was handed over as part of an expansion. It is 255 meters long, 65 meters wide and has a top height of 24 meters. Part of this building complex was also a two-story waiting room building, a pavilion with waiting rooms for classes I to IV, which stood in the middle of the platform hall on the central island platform. The conversion to a pure through station took place between 1909 and 1915. However, the previous waiting room fell victim to this conversion of the terminal station into a through station.

Today's waiting room was finally built below the southern base of the station concourse in 1915. The southern front building with two large arched portals and glazed fronts served as a waiting room for first-class station guests.

During the Great Depression from 1929 and when the Second World War began in 1939, the waiting room could only rarely open. Due to the favorable location under the tracks, the rooms remained almost intact, even though the city suffered severe bomb damage all around.

In the spring of 2014 the “old waiting room” was rebuilt and reopened in August 2014 under the name “waiting room at the cathedral”. The former owner Elias Khamassi planned to continue the gastronomy with more space in the Rheinauhafen under the name "Alter Wartesaal", but this venue is now called "WARTESAAL im Zollhafen".

Todays use

Old waiting room at dusk

Since December 6, 1950, the station bookseller Gerhard Ludwig organized his political and cultural “Wednesday talks” in his station bookstore, the so-called Third Waiting Room . The demolition and rebuilding of the main station hardly affected the waiting room. The new reception building was inaugurated on September 23, 1957.

The Deutsche Bundesbahn, as the owner of the entire station complex, tried since 1980 to separate from individual rooms of the main station. The station catering, which included the waiting room, was suitable for this. Alfred Biolek discovered the rooms offered for rent in May 1983, rented them and had them renovated. The wall paneling and the stucco as well as Art Deco chairs and lights have been preserved. He involved his then producer Alfred Lichter and Gigi Campi's son Paolo in the operating company. In October 1983 the renovated complex was opened by Alfred Biolek. The restaurant with its stucco ceilings up to 4.80 meters high and next to it the original Art Nouveau room from 1915 remained unchanged.

Premises

As the only historically preserved complex of Cologne Central Station, the premises are suitable for a wide variety of events. The waiting room consists of a restaurant , bar and disco . The two halls are 560 and 210 m² in size and can accommodate up to 1,000 guests in total. Company or evening events as well as fashion shows and TV productions as well as cabaret and comedy evenings or product presentations can take place here. The old waiting room first gained national fame when the cabaret series Mitternachtsspitzen has been recorded by WDR since September 17, 1988 . The cabaret series has been broadcast from here since its inception, initially with Richard Rogler from September 17, 1988, and presented by Jürgen Becker since May 14, 1992 . Since September 2003 an offshoot of the KitKatClub from Berlin has its monthly domicile in the old waiting room . The rooms are also used by collectors' fairs for record, CD and comic fans, cabaret and ballet evenings , art exhibitions and vernissages , theater evenings, fashion shows , gala events and product presentations.

operator

Paolo Campi continued the business of the operating company "Alter Wartesaal GmbH" with Andreas Lichter. In August 2007, extensive renovation work was completed and the improved technology was completed. A total of 28 km of low-voltage and high-voltage cables were laid for this purpose. In April 2010, Elias Khamassi and his wife Beata took over the operating company. Wartesaal Connection GmbH has been the new operator since August 2014, and since then the restaurant has been called "Waiting Room at the Cathedral".

Web links

Commons : Alter Wartesaal  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kölner Stadtanzeiger from November 19, 2009, amusements in the waiting room ( Memento from February 11, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
  2. ^ Paul Wietzorek, Das Historische Köln , 2006, p. 144
  3. ↑ Ulrich Krings, Baukultur 1984, No. 5, pp. 32–36.
  4. ↑ Old waiting room / waiting room at the cathedral. Koeln-Hbf.de, accessed on June 19, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Anja Katzmarzik: Change of location: "Waiting room" moves to the Rheinauhafen. Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , October 29, 2013, accessed on May 21, 2014 .
  6. ↑ WAITING ROOM in the customs port. NEW WARTESAAL Gastronomie GmbH, accessed on May 21, 2014 .
  7. ^ Peter Fuchs: Chronicle of the history of the city of Cologne. Volume 2, 1991, p. 295.
  8. ↑ Kölnische Rundschau of April 8, 2010, “Alter Wartesaal” in new hands

Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 32 "  N , 6 ° 57 ′ 34"  E