Østerport Station

This is the same front in 1901, four years after it opened. The tower and the arched windows are already there. So is a covered veranda along the street.

When it was new, the station was called temporary.

In January 1897, while it was being built, a Copenhagen newspaper said so plainly. "It is not being built for eternity," the paper wrote, "and the work can therefore go fairly fast." It expected the line that would join the city's railways across town to take ten years or more. Almost a century later, the state's survey of historic buildings still noted, in capital letters, that it was "built as a TEMPORARY station".

The station is still here, 129 years on. Today it serves S-trains, regional trains, trains to Sweden and the metro under the square.

This study is about why it lasted. Part of the answer is in a drawing kept by the railway museum.

Look for: the spire on the little tower. It has not always been there. We come back to that.

Stay where you are. To see why anyone would call a new station temporary, you need to know one thing.

In the 1890s, Copenhagen's railways had a gap in the middle.

The trains ended at the main station, on the west side of town. There was no line straight across the city to the north side. A train going north had to go the long way round, by Hellerup.

Everyone agreed this had to change. Nobody agreed how. Plans came and went: move the main station, build a new one, dig a line under the old city ramparts to close the gap. In November 1892 the plans were argued over in Parliament. One member said the matter had already stood on the agenda for many years.

Meanwhile, a new line was coming: the Coast Line, along the shore to Helsingør. It needed an end in Copenhagen. And it needed it before anyone had decided where the city's railways would finally meet.

That station was never built.

Three years later, in March 1896, Wenck drew again. This is the building that stands here today: the two arched windows, the tower and spire, the striped gables. But at the bottom of the drawing, under the building, runs a row of wide brick arches, as high as a train.

The railway museum, which keeps both sheets, reads the difference simply. The 1893 station was temporary because it left no room for the main tracks to pass under it. The 1896 station did. You can see both drawings, view by view, at the end of this study.

So the station was called temporary, and it was cheap. But the building Wenck actually drew was ready for a railway that did not exist yet. For us, that is the most interesting thing about it. A modest building, with room under it for what came next. The drawing proves the room under the building. Whether Wenck meant it as a quiet bet on the future, no document says.

Look for: later, from the platforms, the brick arches under the building. They are in the 1896 drawing.

The tracks lie in a deep cutting. That is not an accident. You are standing on the edge of Copenhagen's old fortifications.

For centuries the city ended about here, behind ramparts and a moat. The city's East Gate stood just west of this square from 1708. In Danish, East Gate is Østerport. The gate was pulled down when the fortifications went. The station only took that name in 1934. Wenck's drawings call it "Østerbro", the opening notice of 1897 "Copenhagen East", and a newspaper of 1897 the East Station.

The railway used what the fortress left behind. In January 1897 the newspaper described it: "Where the city moat so short a time ago spread its still waters, the tracks now draw their black stripes."

The digging, the track-laying and five bridges on the way to Hellerup were carried out by a contractor, N.C. Monberg, to the drawings of the railway's section engineer, Andersen. He had trained as an architect, then built harbours and docks. While he made this railway yard, the paper noted, he was also building a harbour in Sweden and a dock at Helsingør.

From the square, this looks like a one-storey building. It is not. It has two storeys, and you came in on the top one.

The 1897 newspaper noticed this too. From Østerbrogade the station does not look like much, it wrote. "Only when you come into the house itself, or see it from the track side, do you discover that it is the upper floor you enter from the street."

The ticket offices were up here, at street level. From them you went down the stairs to the trains.

The paper pointed out that this is the reverse of the station at the other end of the line. At Helsingør you come in on the ground floor and walk up to the trains.

The walls are a frame of timber, painted green, with red brick laid in between. Timber and brick were cheap. They also went up fast.

In January 1897 the paper was frank. The stations on the new line were "not especially lavishly built", it wrote. This one was "made of red brick and timber frame, with a tower as the only especially prominent ornament".

Then it added: "In spite of the cheapness, the station looks like becoming rather pretty."

The architect was Heinrich Wenck. He was the State Railways' chief architect from 1894 to 1921. He drew the Coast Line's stations north of Klampenborg as well as this one, and later the main station of Copenhagen, which opened in 1911. A master mason called Wienberg built this one to his drawings.

Look first at the brick between the timbers. It is not laid the same way in every panel. Some panels run straight. Others run on the diagonal, or in a zigzag. The same bricks, laid with a little more thought, cost almost nothing extra.

This way of building is very old. A skeleton of timber carries the roof, and the gaps between the timbers, called panels, are filled in. For centuries, Danish builders filled the panels with woven sticks covered in clay, then whitewashed them. In towns, fired brick took over from about 1800. In towns, carpenters carved the timbers and masons laid the brick in patterns, because a town house was meant to be looked at.

Then the towns turned against it. After the great fires of the 1700s, Copenhagen and other towns required new street fronts in solid masonry. By the late 1800s every outer wall had to be solid. That makes this front unusual for the city: a timber-framed street front, built in Copenhagen a century after the rules had pushed timber off the street.

Around 1900 architects brought the old way back, as they looked for a building tradition of their own. Wenck's Coast Line is part of that story.

It is also a way of building that lasts, when it is cared for in the old way. A timber-framed house in Helsingør from 1577 still has almost all its original frame. The guides for old houses give the reason: it was kept for more than four centuries with lime and linseed oil, which let rain and damp dry out quickly. It was spared the plastic paints of the last century.

On the roof sit flat cut-out beasts with bird-like heads, one at the end of a ridge. Along the ridges runs an iron railing of small loops. The gables facing the tracks are boarded in red and white stripes.

None of this costs much. All of it makes a cheap building look cared for. When the state surveyed the station in 1991, it noted "various wood-carver's work" and called it "a fine, well-proportioned station in the National Romantic style".

National Romanticism was the new style of those years in Denmark. It looked for a Danish way to build, in plain materials like brick, timber and slate, with carving and paint where other styles used stone.

Look for: the crown and the letters DSB on the weathervane, and a panel of zigzag brick.

The station has two great halls, one behind each of the arched windows you saw from the square. Each has a curved ceiling of white boards, ribbed in red, and tied across by twisted iron rods. Along the sides run arcades two storeys high.

Why two halls? By 1932 the answer was written over the doors. Seest's drawing shows one entrance signed "To Klampenborg" and the other "To Helsingør". One hall for each line. What the two halls were for in 1897, we have not found.

Now look at the colours. The woodwork is red and green. On the Coast Line stations of 1897, Wenck painted his timber in a deep Swedish red and a dark bottle green. The pair became his mark. You find it on his stations all over Denmark, and on Copenhagen's main station too. This is one of the places where it started.

For years you could not see much of it. Lowered ceilings hid the vaults. Layer on layer of paint covered the first colours.

Between 2016 and 2019 the station was restored. The engineers Sweco and the architects KHR designed the work for the State Railways. Aarsleff Rail built it, and the heritage authority followed it closely. Trains ran the whole time.

Colour specialists searched down through the layers of paint to find the first colours. The woodwork was painted red and green again, as in 1897, with yellow and blue on chosen carved details. The paints were made the old way too: linseed oil on the wood, silicate paint on the walls, glue paint for the decorations.

The lowered ceilings came out. The arcades along the vaults were opened again. The builders also found what earlier rebuildings had removed. The lower ends of the timber braces along the sides of the halls had been taken away. They were made again, in the old shape. The walls were rebuilt the old way, with wood, straw and plaster. The floors got terrazzo, a smooth floor of stone chips set in cement and polished.

Some tracks do not stop here. They run on, in under the building, through brick arches, and into a tunnel.

That tunnel is the line the 1897 newspaper was waiting for: the line under the old ramparts, joining the north to the main station. It took twenty years. And when it came, the station did not have to move. Wenck's 1896 drawing had already left room under the building for it.

On Tuesday 27 November 1917 a minister opened the line. A train full of guests left the main station and ran, a newspaper wrote, "through the tunnel to Østerbro station". The run back, without a stop, took six and a half minutes. Half of the new line runs in tunnel. The earth dug out for it was used to make new land along the shore. Four days later, on Saturday 1 December, everyone could ride it.

In 1934 the electric S-trains came, and the station took the name it has today: Østerport, after the old East Gate. For the new trains, Seest rebuilt the station. In his drawing, the open veranda along the street is closed in with windows and doors. That is how the front still looks.

In 1976–79 the station was restored and brought back towards how it first looked. A further restoration ended in 1984 with the spire put back. On 4 November 1992 it was listed by the state, together with its two platform canopies. That is the highest protection a Danish building can have.

Look around the square at its neighbours. Each arrived in a different decade, and each had to find its own way of standing beside the station.

In 2019 the metro opened under the square, with entrances in the square and in one of the station's gables. Beside the station, where a low shopping centre with a glass pyramid stood from 1991, an office building of 2021 by the same architects who restored the station, KHR, wears a screen of rust-red glass. A critic in Politiken found that the colour sits well with the station's brick.

Across the square stands another wooden building of the same years: the exhibition building of Den Frie, the artists' society, designed by the painter J.F. Willumsen. It was itself taken down and set up again here.

In 2023 a large painting on glass by the artist Tal R was put up inside the station. It is called "The journey begins here".

Look for: the line where the old station meets the newer buildings beside it.

Come in the afternoon. That is when the sun falls on the street front, and the red brick and green timber are at their best.

So what has lasted?

The room under the building. The station was built as a temporary one. Wenck drew it with space for a railway that did not yet exist, and when the railway came, the station stayed.

The cheap materials. Brick and timber went up fast in 1896–97. They have also proved easy to mend. In the last restoration, a damaged gable was recorded, taken down, and built up again from the record. Walls were redone with wood, straw and plaster.

The colours. Swedish red and bottle green, first used on this line, came back on station after station. Under a hundred years of paint, they were still there to be found.

To us, as architects, this is the station's real lesson. A building does not need to be grand to last. It needs to be simple, well made, easy to repair, and drawn with one eye on what might come next. For a house today, that means plain materials you can mend one piece at a time, and a plan that leaves room for the next owner's needs. That is our reading, not a fact from the archive. You can test it against the walls.

One question is still open. Who decided, in the early 1920s, to take the spire down, and why? We have not found the reason written down.

• Danmarks Jernbanemuseum, Jernbanekilder (the railway museum's catalogue) — Heinrich Wenck, "Midlertidig Station paa Østerbro" ("Temporary station at Østerbro"), 1893, never built; Wenck, "Østerbro-Station", two sheets, March 1896, the building as built, with the museum's notes on the room for the main tracks under it; photographs dated 1916 and July 1924 — checked 12 October 2026
• Dagens Nyheder, 24 January 1897, p. 2, Den nye Østbanegaard ("The new East Station") — the yard begun October 1895; the moat; the raised street; the station expected to move; "not being built for eternity"; brick and timber frame; Wienberg, Monberg and Wenck; "rather pretty"; entered at the top floor — checked 12 October 2026
• Dagbladet (København), 29 July 1897, p. 1 — the State Railways' notice of the opening train on 1 August and public traffic from 2 August — checked 12 October 2026
• Morsø Folkeblad, 3 August 1897, p. 1, Med Kystbanen ("On the Coast Line") — the first train; the eastern glacis; "no more beautiful railway in Denmark" — checked 12 October 2026
• Viborg Stifts-Tidende, 10 November 1892, p. 1 — the Folketing debate of 9 November 1892 on Copenhagen's railways — checked 12 October 2026
• Social-Demokraten, 29 November 1917, p. 5, Boulevardbanens Indvielse ("The Boulevard line's inauguration") — the opening on Tuesday 27 November; the trial train "through the tunnel to Østerbro station"; six and a half minutes; half in tunnel; the earth used for new land; public traffic from Saturday 1 December — checked 12 October 2026
• All newspapers through Mediestream, Det Kgl. Bibliotek (the Royal Library), read from the page images
• Det Kgl. Bibliotek, K.T. Seest, Østerbro St. Ombygning ("Østerbro station, rebuilding"), drawing no. 4533, 13 August 1932 — the box in place of the spire; the veranda closed in; the entrances "To Klampenborg" and "To Helsingør". Still in copyright: described, not reproduced — checked 12 October 2026
• Det Kgl. Bibliotek, the Portrait Collection — Heinrich Wenck by Marius Christensen, 1903, and by Peter Elfelt, 1921, signed; N.C. Monberg by Marius Christensen, about 1900. Free of copyright — checked 12 October 2026
• FBB, the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces, case 3100210 and building 3134041 — listed 4 November 1992 with its surroundings and the two platform canopies of 1914–15; the SAVE survey of 1991 — checked 12 October 2026
• Museum of Copenhagen, KBM 3834 Østerport Station, archaeological report — the East Gate — checked 12 October 2026
• Lex.dk, Heinrich Wenck, by Thomas Kappel — chief architect of the State Railways 1894–1921 — checked 12 October 2026
• Weilbachs Kunstnerleksikon (Weilbach's dictionary of Danish artists, lex.dk), Heinrich Wenck — born 10 March 1851; Østerport 1894–97, rebuilt 1923 by K.T. Seest — checked 13 October 2026
• Database of Modern Exhibitions, University of Vienna — Den Frie at Aborreparken from 1898 and at Oslo Plads from 1913 — checked 13 October 2026
• DK Arkitekter, Københavns Hovedbanegård, edition 2 (2026) — Swedish red and bottle green first used on the Coast Line — checked 12 October 2026
• Lex.dk, Bindingsværk ("timber framing"), by Jørgen Ganshorn and Søren Koch — clay infill from early times; town fronts required in solid masonry from the 1700s, all outer walls by the late 1800s; the revival around 1900 — checked 13 October 2026
• Bolius, Bliv klogere på bindingsværk ("Learn about timber framing") — brick panels; decoration on town timber framing; regional colours — checked 13 October 2026
• Bevar dit hus (bevardithus.dk) and Bygningsbevaring (bygningsbevaring.dk), guides to timber-framed houses — clay panels until about 1800; lime mortar without cement; lime and linseed oil; Strandgade 27 in Helsingør, 1577 — checked 13 October 2026
• Danske Jernbaner (danskejernbaner.dk), Østerport Station (Kk) — the names and their dates; the platform canopies 1914–15; the tower rebuilt 1984 — checked 12 October 2026
• DSB, press release 18 September 2019, Østerport Station — genskabt og smukkere end nogensinde ("recreated and more beautiful than ever"); Magasinet KBH, 19 September 2019 — the 2016–19 restoration — checked 12 October 2026
• KHR Architecture, project pages; Sweco, project page; Renover.dk; Hovedstadens (the slate roof and tower) — restoration details, paints and team — checked 12 October 2026
• Magasinet KBH, 10 March 2021, Østerport II — the office building at Oslo Plads 2 by KHR — checked 12 October 2026
• DSB, press release 12 December 2023 — Tal R, Rejsen begynder her ("The journey begins here") — checked 12 October 2026
• Danish Wikipedia, Østerport Station, N.C. Monberg — seeds only, checked 12 October 2026
• kbhbilleder, Museum of Copenhagen — records 291984, 292008, 292054, 250871, 292076, 289150, 202841 — checked 12 October 2026
• Seen on the building in DK Arkitekter's photographs, 2026 — the weathervane; the wooden beast; the striped gables; the arches over the tracks
• The archive photographs and portraits are restored. DK Arkitekter restored each one with an image model and checked it against the original. Their colour and finer detail are an interpretation, not historical evidence
• The aerial views are Skråfoto, the oblique aerial photographs of the Danish Agency for Climate Data (Klimadatastyrelsen), processed by DK Arkitekter with an image model for clear air and even light. They are presentation images, not survey photographs
• The drawings on the posters are Heinrich Wenck's own lines, taken unchanged from the railway museum's scans. DK Arkitekter cleaned the paper, lifted the handwritten labels, sums and archive marks, and added the colour with an image model. The colour is an interpretation
• Still unexplained: why the spire was taken down; what the two halls were for in 1897; where the chandeliers first hung