The station is located next to the original site of the historic Bahnhof Schöneberg, opened in 1881 at the Südringspitzkehre, the branch terminal line closing the southern Ringbahn by a switchback or hairpin turn at the Berlin Potsdamer Bahnhof, where the circular trains reversed, and could change the steam locomotives for servicing them and refilling with coal and water.

Passengers could change to the Wannseebahn by crossing the long distance rails via a foot bridge accessible from the north tip of the Kolonnenstraße station to reach the southern tip of the original Großgörschenstraße station platform, which stretched southwards from the eponymous street, and was replaced 1939 by the new Großgörschenstraße station, which stretches north from the epinomous street up to Yorckstraße and is now called Yorckstraße (Großgörschenstraße).

[3] The Welthauptstadt plan called for the Südringspitzkehre to be closed, and to use the preparations for its introduction into the underground Potsdamer Platz station at the northern and southern ends of that station instead for a new direct S-Bahn link between two new long distance stations located on the northern and southern Ring sections, and this link was to use, between Yorckstraße and the southern section of the Ring, not the corridor along the Berlin-Potsdam-Magdeburg railway, but the one of the Dresdener and Anhalter Bahn.

Plans for replacing the old Kolonnenstraße station by a new one emerged in the 1980s, after the West-Berlin government took over the running of the S-Bahn in Westberlin.

A competition of architects was called, and in July the design of the Berlin-based architectural office Medenbach was selected.

The new station called Julius-Leber-Brücke lies slightly west from the location of the Kolonnenstraße interchange station planned in 1936, because the northern mound of the Wannseebahn tunnel is located further west as originally planned, as explained above.