This street corner between Bahnhofstrasse and Bahnhofplatz is located in Kreis 1 south of Zürichs main railway station.
As a result of the opening of Zürich railway station in 1847 many hotels were build around the train station and as one of them – at this very corner – the ‘Hotel National’ (today ‘Hotel Schweizerhof Zürich’) by the architects Heinrich Honegger-Näf and Julius Bosshard. Since then, the building changed a lot. In 1893, two other buildings were added to the hotel complex, which originally consisted of only two buildings (Bahnhofstrasse 93 and Bahnhofplatz 7) and together they formed the structure as
it is still today. Over the course of time, new architectural ideas came up and as a result the sandstone neo-classical arches on Bahnhofstrasse were replaced by a Art Nouveau façade in 1908, which has been preserved to this day and has been put under preservation order since 1978.
The uniqueness of the corner Bahnhofstrasse/Bahnhofplatz is its very special involvement in its urban surrounding area. Because the Bahnhofstrasse is a linear extension of the train stations transversal axis the corner is right in all arriving travellers line of sight and directs it as a part of the northern entrance to one of Zürichs best known boulevards right into the Bahnhofstrasse. Also the corner seems like an extension of the train station itself. Although the buildings facade was a bit changed, both share a connection through their neo-renaissance style.
