The small connecting roads between the main streets of St. Goar, Oberstraße and Heerstraße, owe their names partly to famous personalities of the city; others are named after distinctive buildings or objects. Several street names are derived from famous inns. In addition to the Gersten- and Ochsengasse, this also applies to Sonnengasse. Here, the street name has survived the eponymous inn ‚Zur Sonne‘, the former business now serves as a residential house.
The cross street that meets Sonnengasse here breaks up the original cityscape. It was not built until after the great fire of 1759; before that, there were no longitudinal connections between Ober- and Heerstraße. The construction of the new street not only shortened the distances between the cross streets, but also increased fire safety by reducing the width of the closed house fronts. Initially, this street was called Zwerchgasse – „zwerch“ is the regional term for „cross“. Later, the street was renamed Poststraße when the post office moved in here in the 1930s. The current name Herpellstraße commemorates St. Goar’s district commissioner Christoph Abraham Herpell, who donated a considerable sum of money to the city about a hundred years ago.
In Sonnengasse and Herpellstraße there are still some buildings with attractive front doors or house signs.