History
The history of the building
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The corner house on Schiffbauerdamm, built in the 1880s, has been home to many different kinds of bars and restaurants in its time. Up to 1919 the location was a popular meeting place of the shipbuilding workers who used to work here.In the following years, the shipyards were replaced by residential and commercial buildings; in the process, the former dining rooms became the offices of the Geneva Association of Swiss Merchants and a branch bank. In 1931 a new owner established an up-market restaurant with the aim of “pleasurably satisfying the demand for meat and drink”. Looking for a suitable name for the restaurant, he hit upon the idea of “Ganymede”, the cupbearer of the Greek Gods. After the Second World War, the building was restored by the architect Hermann Henselmann (builder of Stalinallee). In GDR times, Ganymed was a restaurant for the “elite”, visited by known artists such as Brecht, Weill or Weigel, the GDR political establishment or members of the Allied Armed Forces. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the restaurant was closed down and only reopened after extensive renovation had been carried out. Of the once opulent stucco façade badly damaged in the war, only one mosaic with the Borussia image is still preserved. The restaurant is today run as a French brasserie. In the spring of 2005, a magnificent sun terrace was opened directly on the Spree embankment, adding to the existing rooms and the Berliner Ensemble (BE) terrace./td> |
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