Huge, colorful graffiti-style murals were painted on the exterior walls, and modern art sculptures were featured inside.

Outside, the garden featured an open-air exhibition of metal sculptures as well as galleries and studios for sculptors and painters.

The building is typically treated as an example of early Modern architecture but exhibits aspects of both Classic and Gothic styles.

A group of individual shareholders hoped to establish a market advantage by capitalizing on a common location.

In 1943 the skylights were closed and the corresponding ridge turrets removed, so that French war prisoners could be held in the attic.

The building was heavily damaged during World War II, though a large portion of it survived intact.

The movie theater Camera was located in the Friedrichstraße gateway area, but was forced to leave in 1958 due to the worsening condition of the building.

During the reconstruction work the facade was partially changed and a lobby area was built to house cash registers and checkout aisles.

The planned demolition was not delayed however, until the group managed to get the Berlin Round Table to issue a last-minute injunction.

The study found that the building was in surprisingly good shape, and it was named a historic landmark shortly thereafter.

In the beginning the center was run by well-known curator Jochen Sandig who expanded the building considerably.

In 1991, the associated housing burnt down and there was considerable suspicion that the fire was started deliberately in order to pave the way for a new art center.

Tacheles provided inspiration for a scene in the German film Good Bye, Lenin!, according to commentary by director Wolfgang Becker on the US DVD release.

"Upstairs" lived the artists from the coterie around organizer Martin Reiter, chairman of Tacheles e.V., the association that was formed in 1994 but went bankrupt in 2010.

"Downstairs" around 20 businesses including High End Kino 54 and Café Zapata, together with the Johannishof artists who were not represented by the e.V., formed Gruppe Tacheles.

Instead, on the next day, the "downstairs group" left the building peacefully in return for a payment of EUR 1 million from an anonymous source.

[6] Tacheles Metallwerkstatt, the sculpture park, was open until March 2013, when the financial group Nordbank decided to make money out of it.

[7] The association Artprotacheles aims at expanding the idea of Tacheles through Mobile Atelier Projects and has already realised the first one in Berlin Friedrichshain.

Construction began in September of 2019 for a mixed-use scheme that follows the trend of the 1990s to fill in vacant land in Berlin with perimeter block buildings, utilizing courtyards and mimicking the traditional urban structure of the city.