The HISTORY
600 years ago, the Sihlbrücke (or Sihl Bridge) was the only bridging point between Zurich’s inner city and the area called Aussersihl. A famous bottleneck, this bridge was the scene of many important battles.
(see: wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_St._Jakob_an_der_Sihl)
Later in the city’s history the master builder of Zurich, Gustav Gull (1858-1942), built a tram station (Tramwartehaus Aussersihl) next to the newly reconditioned Sihlbrücke. Due to increasingly heavy traffic, the bridge later had to be enlarged. Gull’s station was taken down and the new master builder of Zurich, Hermann Herter (1877-1945), built the station that still stands today. Herter was also the architect responsible for the tram stations at Paradeplatz and Bellevue, as well as the neighboring Hallenbad City and the Biergarten Bauschänzli, to name just a few of his projects.
From a gastronomic point of view, the station only had a sandwich bar until 2001, which was then refashioned as an Italian restaurant called Tramstation by Michel Péclard. This fashionable locality was finally closed and, after some serious renovation work, a ‘grown-up’ version with a professional restaurant infrastructure was launched in the summer of 2008 headed up by the well-known gastronomic team, brothers Thomas and Simon Krebs in partnership with Katharina Joss.
In October 2011, a new team around initiators Adrian Hagenbach, Stefan Roth and Leopold Weinberg have taken over the running of the place and renamed it the Helvti Diner…