On a broad Berlin street, several workers, some bare-chested, are prying up and shoveling out the old cobblestone pavement — a warning sign “Caution: Construction Site” marks the cordoned area. In the background, a spacious urban thoroughfare stretches out with turn-of-the-century residential buildings alongside newer apartment blocks, illustrating the mixed building stock of the post-war city. The scene exemplifies the civil reconstruction of West Berlin in the mid-1950s, when streets, utility lines, and public spaces were extensively renewed. Such construction work was not merely an infrastructural necessity but also a visible signal of the emerging economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder) and the Western Allied claim to present West Berlin as a functioning, modern city.