Two-dimensional tensile stresses are occurring at the back of the anchorage of the tendons of prestressed concrete bridges. A new method named "tensile stress region" for the design of the reinforcement is presented in this paper. The basic idea of this approach is the division of an anchor block into several slices, which are described by the tensile stress region. The orthogonal reinforcing wire mesh can be designed in each slice to resist the tensile stresses. Additionally the sum of the depth of every slice defined by the tensile stress region is used to control the required length of the longitudinal reinforcement bars. An example for the reinforcement design of an anchorage block of an external prestressed concrete bridge is analyzed by means of the new presented method and a finite element model is established to compare the results. Furthermore the influence of the transverse and vertical prestressing on the ordinary reinforcement design is taken into account. The results show that the amount of reinforcement bars at the anchorage block is influenced by the layout of the transverse and the vertical prestressing tendons. Using the "tensile stress region" method, the ordinary reinforcement bars can be designed more precisely compared to the design codes, and arranged according to the stress state in every slice.