Strausberger Platz 19 (at the south-west of the square)
Construction period: 1952–1954
Architecture: Hermann Henselmann collective
Mural in the lobby: Bert Heller
Apartments and a department store for children – combined in Haus des Kindes
The southern high-rise is precisely in line with the avenue’s axis and is therefore always in focus.
Inside it featured the unusual combination of department store and a residential building.
The HO children’s department store used a basement floor (puppet theatre), parts of the ground floor (foyer with a snack bar and day care centre), the first and second floors (retail areas) and the 11th and 12th floors (children’s café). The interior fittings were premium and of high artistic quality. It was and tailored in scale and design for its customers: the children.
According to Henselmann, the apartments on the 3rd to 10th floors were “larger and better appointed than the others on Stalinallee.” From the very beginning, the building was home to privileged residents.
Today, only the design of the porter’s lodge and the stucco inlays of the Berliner Volkslieder (Berlin Folk Songs) mural in the foyer of the residential building give a rough impression of the quality of the fittings that were in the children’s department store in 1954.