Line D of the Berlin U-Bahn (now U8) was originally planned to run under Dresdener Strasse but late in the planning a reroute was made to provide a station more convenient for the nearby Wertheim department store. By this time work beneath Dresdener Strasse had already commenced and the partially-built running tunnel and station were abandoned.
The station itself was converted into an electricity sub-station, probably in the 1920s. When World War II broke out, the running tunnel was converted into a ‘mother and child’ air-raid shelter, with individual rooms to allow mothers with young children to sleep well and continue with war work after a night of Allied air raids.
When the Berlin Wall was built, this disused tunnel ran directly under the course of the wall and a substantial underground wall was built to prevent it being used as an escape route. This wall was fitted with sensitive detectors to pick up any tampering or dismantling efforts. The map location marks the point at which the wall used to pass.
When visited in 2007, the air-raid shelter was flooded to a depth of around nine inches but otherwise the quality of the construction meant that all the rooms could be explored. The subterranean Berlin Wall was still in situ. Another wall separates the tunnel from the station section which we visited from a separate entrance. This was not flooded and again well-preserved, with the steel roof supports clad in fine Swedish marble and the sub-station cabinets still in place.
Access to the site is no longer possible.