The heritage-listed entrance building was built from 1905 to 1907 as a castle-like brick building of the Gründerzeit-like style of the Hanover school of architecture by its important representative in Hamburg, the civil engineer Franz Andreas Meyer.

It served as an interchange point between the Hamburg-Altonaer Stadt- und Vorortbahn (Hamburg-Altona City and Suburban railway, the predecessor of the S-Bahn) and the Lübeck-Hamburg railway.

The station building, designed by the architect Eugene Goebel, was restored in the mid-1990s and is now used as a restaurant.

Also located next to the former station building is a preserved bunker of the Zombeck type (a reinforced concrete cylinder with a conical roof and a step-less ramp designed to accommodate 500 people, especially at stations when trains were stopped during air raids) from the Second World War.

It was established in 1941 under the then air-raid shelter program to offer passengers and passers-by protection during air raids.