Müllerstrasse depot

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Courtyard entrance with administration building and car hall in the background

The Müllerstraße depot is a depot of the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe in the Wedding district . The courtyard, which opened in 1927, was the second largest tram station in Berlin after the Lichtenberg depot . It served the tram until 1958 and has been used as an omnibus courtyard since 1960 . The complex, also known as the “tram city” after a contribution by Max Osborn , includes the actual courtyard and a surrounding block of flats with around 300 apartments. It was designed according to plans by Jean Krämer in collaboration with Gerhard Mensch and Richard Bauroth in the style of Berlin Expressionism and is a listed building as a whole .

Location and structure

Apartment block on Müllerstrasse, northwest of the entrance
Housing development on Belfaster Straße

The depot is located in the north of the Wedding district, the so-called English Quarter . The area is bordered by Belfaster Straße in the north-west, Müllerstraße in the south-west and Londoner Straße in the south-east. The north-eastern boundary of the property was on Themsestrasse , which was aligned with today's Edinburger Strasse . Around 1960 this road was de-dedicated and the depot was expanded to include this area. Since then, the allotment garden has formed the north-eastern end of the Sunday joy. The square has an area of ​​around 6.1 hectares, of which the depot takes up around three quarters (44,547 square meters). Of this, 17,740 square meters are built on. The entire facility has an approximately symmetrical floor plan. The car hall with a floor area of ​​115 meters × 122 meters is located in the rear part of the property and ended with the former Themsestrasse. The residential development surrounds the other sides of the courtyard and opens up to Müllerstrasse. Two towers, each 32 meters high, form the end.

The central carriage hall consists of three gabled halls, each with a span of 31.6 meters. In the front hall area the inspection shafts were 40 meters long, in the rear part of the hall there were workshops and lounges, to the side of which there were wheelwright , locksmiths and blacksmiths . Equipment rooms and material stores are housed in two flat-roofed side halls, each around ten meters wide. The washing facility, which is also located in the main hall, was fed by two water tanks located in the upper part of the gate structures. The construction consists of solid sheet iron trusses. The hall roofs have continuous skylights with a kinked cross-section. The hall walls are clad on the outside with blue-red fused iron bricks.

At first glance, the residential development has a uniform structure. The buildings on Londoner and Belfaster Strasse have three storeys, while the central and corner buildings on these streets have four storeys. The side on Müllerstrasse, on the other hand, has five full floors. The facades are plastered in reddish brown and decorated with ornamental ceramics. The upper floors are visually separated from each other by horizontal bands made of alternating plaster strips and clinker brick layers. The ground floor, on the other hand, is framed by clinker bricks. The expressive character of the complex is underlined by the pointed projecting wall templates with prismatic capital stones designed by Richard Bauroth . The entire block comprises around 280 to 300 apartments. These have two to three rooms, a bathroom and kitchen and, in some cases, a loggia . The courtyard sides are divided vertically by triangular protruding staircases . In order to visually separate living and working from one another, Krämer had a 35-meter-wide green strip laid out between the apartment block and the courtyard.

The trademark of the tram city are the two 32-meter-high gate buildings on Müllerstrasse. In addition to apartments, they also house the management of the courtyard and other service rooms. On the ground floor of the towers, Gothic-style parabolic arches made of red brick bricks open up. Their keystones lead over to the prismatically folded tower wall. The windows are framed by purple clinker brick . Above the sixth floor are the two water tanks, which are highlighted by the opposing wall folds and the wall cladding, which is also made of purple clinker. The folds of the wall between the triangular windows merge into two-winged windows in the upper area, which end under an ocher-colored cornice.

history

Administrative building of the depot

From 1919 onwards, the numerous individual tram operations were brought together under the roof of the urban Berlin tram (BSt) , which on September 10, 1923 was converted into the private-law Berliner Straßenbahn-Betriebsgesellschaft mbH (BSBG) . On January 1, 1929, this merged with the Hochbahngesellschaft and ABOAG to form the BVG . Under the direction of the BSBG, in addition to the extensive procurement of new vehicles, the old tram depots were also modernized or rebuilt. The Müllerstraße depot, with the residential development dubbed “Tram City”, represented the largest of these projects.

On September 5, 1927, the new courtyard 2 was officially inaugurated. The previous yard 2 on Brandenburgstrasse in Kreuzberg was given the number 7. From around 1935 it was given the abbreviation Mül . At the same time, depot 8 on Ofener Strasse was shut down by the new building. In the car hall there was space for up to 320 tram cars on three by nine tracks. In addition, the tram driving school, the conductor's school, the clothing store and the tram museum were housed in the courtyard. Before the Second World War , the courtyard was primarily home to the trains on lines 15 ( Wilhelmsruh  - Neukölln ), 25 ( Reinickendorf  - Mariendorf ), 41 ( Alexanderplatz  - Tegel ) and 68 ( Herzberge  - Wittenau ), with some other lines such as the Nordring (Line 8, from 1948: Line 3)

During the Second World War , the farm suffered only minor damage, which was quickly repaired. On September 5, 1952, the BVG celebrated the 25th anniversary of the farm with a ceremony with a parade of cars. With the discontinuation of the tram to Tegel and beyond, the courtyards Tegel and Müllerstrasse were closed to tram traffic on July 1, 1958. The last lines 3, 25, 41 and 68 and their operators were located here. The wagons were then distributed to the neighboring farms in Reinickendorf and Moabit .

After the closure, the BVG began converting the courtyard for bus transport. All tracks and inspection pits have been removed. The three halls received central gates. The Themsestrasse, which is adjacent to the rear, has been redesigned to serve as a turning area. The previously wide courtyard entrance was given a central entrance and exit. In addition, the washing system was rebuilt and a new heating system and a gas station were set up on the apron. After a two-year renovation period, the M bus depot went  into operation. At the time of commissioning, there was space for up to 140 vehicles.

Since the closure of the Usedomer Strasse and Helmholtzstrasse bus depots , all bus traffic in the north and northwest of Berlin has been covered by the Müllerstrasse and Spandau courtyards . According to the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe, 239 buses are currently located in the courtyard, and 437 employees of the transport service have their place of work in the courtyard. In addition, the BVG driving school, known as the Verkehrsakademie Omnibus, and its clothing store are located on site. Until the 1990s, the apartments were rented exclusively to employees of the Berlin transport company.

literature

Web links

Commons : Betriebshof Müllerstraße  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Max Osborn: The tram city in the Müllerstrasse . Berlin 1928.
  2. ↑ a b c d Entry in the Berlin State Monument List with further information
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Reinhard Arf: From "Mül" to "M". 80 years of trains and buses from Wedding . In: Verkehrsgeschichtliche Blätter . Issue 1, 2008, pp. 11-13 .
  4. ^ A b Aro Kurth: BVG depot Müllerstrasse. In: Berlin Street. July 21, 2008, accessed February 17, 2013 .
  5. ^ Siegfried Münzinger: Depots of the Berlin trams . In: Berliner Verkehrsblätter . Issue 8, 1969, p. 146 .
  6. ↑ a b depot Müllerstraße ( Memento from December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe.

Coordinates: 52 ° 33 ′ 37.5 ″  N , 13 ° 20 ′ 15 ″  E