History
The original Dortmund station was built north of the city centre by the Cologne-Minden Railway Company (Cöln-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, CME) as part of its trunk line and opened on 15 May 1847. Two years later the Bergisch-Märkische Railway Company (Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, BME) opened its station as a purely terminating station south of the existing station at the end of its main line to Elberfeld (now Wuppertal), its line to Soest (from 1855) and its Ruhr route to Duisburg and Oberhausen (from 1860).
The original station building, which was built on an island between the tracks with its access from Burgtor, was replaced in 1910 by a new large building at its current location. The new station was opened on 12 December 1910. The tracks had been raised to remove the obstruction of road traffic at level crossings. This second Hauptbahnhof in Dortmund was one of the largest of the former German Empire when it opened. On 6 October 1944, it was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid.
The entrance building of Dortmund Hauptbahnhof was replaced in 1952 by a functionalist building. It is regarded as architecturally insignificant, but it has significant stained glass windows on the theme of the former industrial specialisations of Dortmund. Five large stained glass windows document the Dortmund economy. In the middle one the city is shown, flanked to the left and right by a steelworker, a blast furnace worker, a brewer and a bridge builder. During the reconstruction of the station they were removed and the put on exhibition at the Hattingen Henrichshütte (a former steel works, which is partly used as a museum of industry). They were replaced with exact copies.
Dortmund Hauptbahnhof originally housed a movie theatre. The Live Station discothèque was established in this former cinema in 1986. In April 2009, the nightclub was closed in the course of preparations for the reconstruction.
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The original station in 1870
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The new station of 1910
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The station during the occupation of the Ruhr in September 1924
Read more about this topic: Dortmund Central Station
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