As one heads south down Ebertstraße, the Tiergarten, a large forested park, is to one's right, and the new United States Embassy to the left.

Following the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, it was named Königgrätzer Straße in honour of the Prussian victory over Austria at the Battle of Königgrätz.

After the death of the first President of the Weimar Republic, Friedrich Ebert, in 1925, it was renamed Ebertstraße in 1930, but in 1935, under the Nazi regime, it was called Hermann-Göring-Straße, after Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, whose official residence was close by.

In the mid-1930s almost the entire street was dug up for the building of the S-Bahn "north-south link" line from Unter den Linden to Yorckstraße, via Potsdamer Platz and Anhalter Bahnhof.

Construction began in 1934, but determination to have it finished in time for the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936 meant safety measures were ignored: on 20 August 1935 a tunnel collapse just south of the Brandenburg Gate buried twenty-three workmen of whom only four survived; then on 28 December 1936 a fire near Potsdamer Platz station destroyed vital equipment.