The terminus was built on the previous site of the gallows field on the Invalidenstraße, in front of the Hamburg Gate in the Berlin Customs Wall.

As the number of passengers increased rapidly, the station became one of Berlin's busiest railway termini and had to be enlarged several times.

From 1877, this also became the Berlin passenger train terminus of the Preußische Nordbahn (Prussian Northern Railway) to Stralsund via Neu-Strelitz, and later also to Rostock.

[5] The increasing popularity of the station caused massive traffic problems in the north of the city, because the tracks were laid at street level.

Since the rail lines leading to the station crossed the territories of West Berlin, it was closed by the GDR authorities on 18 May 1952 and had been demolished by 1962.

Nevertheless, the Reichsbahn continued to operate the line to connect the stations in the northern and southern areas of West Berlin.

The Nordbahnhof entrance hall was restored in 2006, including a new layout of the forecourt with indicated tracks and inset plaques bearing the destinations of the former trains to the Baltic coast and an exhibition near the platforms describing the era of the "ghost stations".